Transcript: Andrew Santino on This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #621

I switched off my medicine because I wanted to have a little bit more emotional, a storyline kind of. I wanted to be able to connect a little bit more in some moments. And I was having trouble having any feelings because of antidepressants.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah.

THEO VON: It was just hard. It’s like you try to get a feeling, and it kind of stalls out. It gets stuck in the mud, you know? So that was kind of one thing.

And then the government put out this DHS video that made me really scared.

ANDREW SANTINO: The immigration video?

THEO VON: Yeah.

ANDREW SANTINO: Talk about pulling that out of context. They’re so good at that. They just took something that had nothing to do with something else. You making a joke. And then they’re like, he’s our spokesperson. You’re like, what? I didn’t sign up for that, bro.

Dealing with Fear and Paranoia

THEO VON: And so I just got so much hate stuff. I mean, a lot of it I didn’t see, but I would just see enough where it was like, f*, this is scary. And that Charlie Kirk thing had happened not, I think, a couple weeks before. And so I started just getting real paranoid.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah.

THEO VON: You know, I started getting real paranoid at home. I was paranoid about the show. If there could be somebody in the audience, you know.

ANDREW SANTINO: Oh, yeah.

THEO VON: It just, I think it made me really scared, to be honest with you.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah.

THEO VON: And, yeah. So that was happening, and then there was just kind of too many cooks in the kitchen on this set. And then during it. Yeah. I was just, I think my, I just had too much. It was just, it was all kind of too much to, I think, get the show off as best as I could.

And so that’s all I left there thinking, I couldn’t remember where the next joke kind of went.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, sure. Because it’s overwhelming.

THEO VON: Yeah.

The Pressure of Taping Specials

ANDREW SANTINO: I think people don’t know that. I think I’ve said that a hundred times. I always quote Dan Soder. Soder always goes, when someone says, oh, I didn’t, I like Theo more this way than the special or whatever or that. But it’s because with this, you’re getting it straight from the tap. He’s like, you’re getting it right. You’re drinking out of the hose like you’re a kid. This is drinking out of the hose in podcast world and Internet world and live.

THEO VON: Stand up.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah. When you do a taped special, there’s so many more elements that go into it that people have no idea. Dude, I was changing when I taped this last one I did for Hulu.

THEO VON: White noise.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, White noise. I changed 10 different things from the, to the, on the second to last show because I was tripping. I was freaking out. I mean, Zach Townsend, who’s great comic, opens for me. You know Zach from Nashville?

THEO VON: Yeah, he’s great.

ANDREW SANTINO: And Zach was helping me kind of rewrite some stuff to tighten it up and cut the fat. And because I was bummed about a few of the jokes that I told, they didn’t hit the way they did when I was touring.

And then it gets in your head, and then I’m sitting backstage kind of having, you know, this moment of like, do I just not do that joke? He was like, no, that’s a great joke. But I think it’s hard to get that confidence back when you feel overwhelmed. They don’t really feel it as much as you do.

THEO VON: No, they don’t know. And there should be a meter that they see that lets go.

ANDREW SANTINO: A live meter.

THEO VON: Yeah.

ANDREW SANTINO: How I feel about this sh right now, and it’s just jumping up and down. Yeah. And they can. Honestly, they could tell. You’re like, look, I’m feeling. This is like a four and a half right now. It was a six in Des Moines, but now, I don’t know.

THEO VON: That’s the worst when you get in your head about. Because after the first one, you’re like, now what do I change? Anytime you get to your standard at the finish line kind of, and you’re like, what do I adjust? But you’ve been around the whole track with all these jokes. Oh, dude.

Dropping the Ball Before the Goal Line

ANDREW SANTINO: It’s hard. You know what sometimes it feels like, especially when a joke you think was really good. You know how some NFL players get in trouble because they drop the ball before they cross the goal line?

I feel like I was doing that a little bit because I wasn’t committing to the joke because I was unsure of the way that the, you know, a tag came in or the punchline snapped. And then so I started to doubt myself.

But that’s so natural because TV cameras are up. So your brain does a thing that it doesn’t do live. Live. You fly so free, it doesn’t matter. You know what I mean? That’s me. Yeah. Dropping the ball before I get in the end zone. But I did it on two or three jokes.

And then the last taping, Zach kind of reinstilled some confidence in me and was like, dude, just cut it out.

THEO VON: That was nice of him to say that.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, he helped me out a lot. He helped me out a lot. I think if you don’t have people with you and in your team, whether it’s features or hosts or friends or producers or directors, whoever, to kind of give you that extra. Dude, you’re good. You’re good. It gets hard, and sometimes there’s too many cooks.

Sometimes you’re like, I know how to make this meal, man. You got to leave me alone. Yeah, but when you need it, you need it.

I think the more open we are to the audiences about that, the better off it is, because the criticism is higher than it’s ever been for specials and for live taping, for tapings. I mean, and I think when you come clean about what it is, what affected you and the reality of it, the more loving they get around it.

Because this is, it’s just a difficult task to film something. You’re trying to capture lightning in a bottle. And the greats do it often because they’re the, in my opinion, the reason that Louis does it so well is because Louis the, in my opinion, the greatest to ever do it.

THEO VON: Yeah.

ANDREW SANTINO: So, yeah, he captures lightning very well. It’s really hard. I’m trying. I’m out there with a kite and a key, but it’s tough to get it, dude. It’s really hard.

And we do the best that we can delivering after we’ve already toured this thing a ton. And sometimes you over perfect it. You know, you want to pinch this and change that and turn this here and push this in front of this. And then at some point, you have to let it go.

But I was concerned in the fact that I, you’re one of my oldest friends in comedy, and I just wanted, I wanted you to feel good because I know how it feels sometimes.

When I did my half hour with Comedy Central, dude, it was my childhood best friend and my wife, my girlfriend at the time, in the green room. And I got off stage, and my best friend was like, bro. And he came giving me the biggest hug, and I can you give me two minutes in the green room with her? Is that okay? And he got out, and I just started bawling. I thought I tanked.

THEO VON: No way.

ANDREW SANTINO: I just felt the pressure, and I let it all go. Finally.

First Special Struggles

THEO VON: Oh, dude, now that you say that, I thought my first special after I did it, I was like, I, why did I choose to do it? It was, I thought, let’s do it at home. But people there had never seen comedy. A lot of them, there’s a lot of LSU Tiger fans. There was some lady yelling defense the whole f*ing show. I’m not even joking, dude.

ANDREW SANTINO: Cover to cover two in the middle.

THEO VON: Of your joke. People had no fing idea how to act. People were just yelling sh out, tell the story, you know, it was just. And you know, so that was a fing hectic. And I remember getting through that and being like, God, this is a, that was a, it was, that was hell.

ANDREW SANTINO: It’s hard. But I wanted to know you were good when I hit you because I wanted to know that everything was okay. And you know, people have their own opinions on the Internet over what went down. Which is like that video that circulated of you talking to the fans after the show.

THEO VON: Yeah, that was crazy. And I don’t even really remember it, you know, because you’re, you’re.

ANDREW SANTINO: You’re running hot at the end of a show. You’re not really paying attention anything.

The Aftermath

THEO VON: I think somebody had kept kind of bother me a little bit. I don’t say bother because people came to the show, but someone was being aggressive, kept asking me for something. Will you do, will you do this? Can you do this thing? Can you make me a video?

And I feel like I was like, look, lady, I’m just trying to take my own life, okay? It’s been a tough couple of months or whatever. You know, that’s the only place I can imagine that I would kind of say something like that or if I was just kind of said it flippantly or something.

But I was trying to think of what retort? Because it’s not like I was like, hey guys, it’s, I’m just trying not to take my own life. It’s been a cup, it’s been a tough couple of months. It’s not like I was making a speech like that somebody.

But yeah, we left out of there and we thought, oh sh, everything’s good. I think we got it. Let’s wait and see. In the edit, we went out to some country bar. We had a great time. Glenny Balls was there, my buddy Aaron was there.

And then we wake up in the morning and there was just a ton of sh online. And I was like, I just can’t even deal with all this. It made me learn a lot about online and I didn’t even look at it. I didn’t even look at any of that stuff. And I haven’t looked at any of the articles.

One of them popped up when I was scrolling. It was like the Obama’s Netflix or something, which wasn’t even true. It was just. And there were moments during the show was like, look guys, I’m just having a tough time, you know.

I remember I went out there on stage and my mouth immediately got extremely dry, and I was like, oh, man, something is wrong.

Dealing with Performance Anxiety

ANDREW SANTINO: Anxiety. You’re excited and nervous about doing something.

THEO VON: So important to you that hadn’t happened this whole time. And I was like, I can’t go to my school and get water right now. I just walked on stage, they’re clapping. I can’t f*ing take a break already, you know?

ANDREW SANTINO: Didn’t you get water backstage, man? You’re like, there’s no water back there, man. We keep it all on the stool. We don’t got it back there, brother. It’s only on the stool.

THEO VON: Like the guy that shits when he gets right to work, dude, right the moment he walks in the door.

ANDREW SANTINO: Oh, that I got a shit right away. That’s what it feels. I think it’s an overwhelming feeling that cannot be articulated. I’m not smart enough to do it, but I do know what that feels like as a comic. But are you, so what are you going to do now? You feel like you want to take.

THEO VON: I literally, oh, yesterday they just sent me another cut of, I gave him some notes on a cut. Yeah, they’re sending me another cut. It might be fin. So we had two good halves.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah.

Reflecting on the Special

THEO VON: So I’m looking to see. But then also, there’s some stuff. I just wanted to have a little bit more of a story to it, which is the reason I was trying to have a little bit more feeling and emotion so I could kind of have a little bit more storyline in there about growing up in life and a little, you know, and maybe that’s me, was I was trying to do too much. I don’t know.

But you start to realize that these are kind of, they’re kind of like photo albums for, you know, your time and your time you spent with this material. I mean, Neil Brennan said to me, right, for the show, he goes, “Hey, man, this will be the last time you maybe ever do this material. So go out and have a great time with it. Enjoy it, you know, take your time with it. Get the, you know, these are things that have brought you close to people and that have brought people out and hopefully sometimes made people laugh.”

And so it was just like, there was just a lot going on, dude. There was, and I was just like, there’s just, I think I was just spreading myself too thin. I don’t know. It’s just a lot of shit. And I just don’t know if I landed it as well as I would have liked to, but we had to restart a couple times.

There was a thing where I was directing in my head because I wasn’t getting certain information. I was like, well, if the stool was here in the first, when does it need to be there in the second one? And where do I put it when I move it? Just little things like that. And then they had five extra people that didn’t need to be there. It was like they would radio and it would just go to the person right next to him. It was like, we’re living in a fing, I almost thought it was a fing, somebody was playing a prank on me.

And then I just gotten a security guy. So this, there’s this fing guy who was just fing, I mean, you could put a piece of coal in his hand in the morning and you’d have a f*ing diamond.

ANDREW SANTINO: When it comes out.

THEO VON: Oh, you’d have a fing piece of coal that looked like it had a grill on it. You know what I’m saying? At least by the after, like a fing tough guy. And he’d been stopping some of my friends. I just didn’t, everything was just kind of like a lot.

The Security Guy Story

ANDREW SANTINO: Where’d you find this guy, by the way? Most fascinated with security guards.

THEO VON: We found a guy somebody in Nashville set us up with. A guy that was there.

ANDREW SANTINO: Like a military? Ex military?

THEO VON: I think so. Maybe cop, fire department, FBI, undercover cop.

ANDREW SANTINO: Local mall security, high school narc. I’m just going to get a guy that did ROTC in college. I don’t even want.

THEO VON: That’s what I want. I want a guy that did ROTC with that wooden gun and use his test 200. That’s what I wanted.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, my college roommate, my freshman year, my buddy Evan, he did ROTC and he got kicked out. You know how hard that is? It’s impossible. They need you in there. They were like, “Brother, you’re not running in the morning. You’re out. You got to go.” He just, dude, he couldn’t wake up. He didn’t do the exercises. And they were like, “You’re out.” And we’ve almost never kicked anybody out of Arizona State ROTC. They’re begging for people shout out to Ev. He the only guy I know that could get asked to leave ROTC. He was like, “I’m committed.” I was like, “I don’t think so.” There he is, spinning guns.

THEO VON: Well, the crazy is you can tell when an ROTC guy’s in the military because the rest of the guys are lined up firing at the enemy. And this guy just fing whipping his shit, doing tricks. He’s just fing flipping his shit and buying Camaros online.

ANDREW SANTINO: All the ROTC guys, Camaros are Mustangs. The Camaros are Mustangs. They got to be. It’s either a Camaro or it’s a 5.0, baby. Oh, dude.

THEO VON: All the ROTC guys in our high school, all they would do was buy these cars. Super. Like they would buy, sometimes it would, if they couldn’t be a nice Camaro. But every now and then some guy would get jealous of the guy that had a nice Camaro and he would get a piece of and just put a two thousand dollar engine in that. And it was just, you know that car when you were a kid, if you backed it up, you put it on the ground and backed it up. It built up energy.

ANDREW SANTINO: He had to go forward.

THEO VON: Yeah, yeah.

ANDREW SANTINO: And I like a wind up. Yeah, that’s.

THEO VON: And then it would just go as fast and just right off, never straight. That was, that, that was just a piece of shit. They look like a recycling bin fing going at 200 miles an hour. And then they would write the 40 time on the windshield and it was clutch shit that they would do. And they would put all these snipers never dying shit tattoos on their arms. And they were just in fing ROTC.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, dude, they got dreams. That’s going to be my security.

THEO VON: That’s true. That’s exactly my security.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah.

THEO VON: And so that was all scary. And then even just having a security, I mean every day it was just like, dude, there was so much f*ing, I was just dealing with a lot of, I started to get kind of paranoid. I mean there was people after that Charlie Kirk thing texting each other, or you know, “Stay safe,” you know.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah.

THEO VON: So there was just a ton of shit going into it. But we left out of there that night. Had a blast, dude.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah.

THEO VON: You know, and thought that we might have it. We’ll just look at the tape. And then, yeah, then the media just, you know, f them, you know, but not fing. But it’s f* them. They just, you just realize that they’re bottom feeders. These websites that create these things. You’re like, oh, it’s so sad.

Dealing with Media and Negativity

ANDREW SANTINO: That’s what they need. I think that’s how they make their money now. And the way that we changed and the way that podcasting kind of changed Daily Current Media, you know, they kind of copied us, but they took the worst version of it where there’s way more love coming out of you and this than they give credit for.

So they’re going to appeal. What they want to be the best story. The best story is never going to be Theo is surrounded by friends and family having a good night. It’s going to be the opposite. You know, nobody wants to read that. No one wants to read “Great Time with Theo and his friends at the Country Bar with Glenny Balls.” Nobody wants to read that. That’s, I mean, that’s the unfortunate truth. They want to read the other thing. They want to hear the drama, you know, they want the other, the other version. It makes them feel a little bit more interested and peaked, and that’s a bummer.

THEO VON: And we all do. That’s a part of, I even notice with myself, it’s like, I needed, not what do I give my attention to? You know, when I see things that, it’s like, oh, this couple split up or this sort of thing, I don’t want to give my attention to that because I’m just adding to that thing of, let me add energy into this, or, look who got busted or just shit like that. It’s like I’m just kind of giving some energy into that. If it’s super negative, you know?

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah. Wash that all away. I think the only thing you could do now, even when there’s a lot of negativity, not, you know, whatever in the, in the public sphere, in the comedy sphere and the, whatever it is, I think, you know, I focus on drinking coffee and throwing the ball with my dog every morning. It was my favorite thing to do in the world. I did that here. I was late because of that. Oh, I have, I drink a whole pot of coffee in the morning and I play with the dog, and that’s my reset. I don’t know, because there’s no, there’s nothing going on. When that’s going on, I leave my phone at the house and I just go for a walk and then go play with her in the backyard.

THEO VON: Oh, you have a backyard?

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, we got, we got a little, tiny little backyard. In LA. You don’t get much, but, you know, it’s fake grass, too, which is, you know what I mean? Yeah, I’m not taking care of grass, bro.

THEO VON: Well, in some of this new grass, it’s crabgrass or it’s that, it’s that Chinese stalking grass or whatever it’s called.

ANDREW SANTINO: That’s Bobby Lee’s grass, the Chinese stalking grass. That’s what he calls it.

THEO VON: Chinese stocking grass. Mocha refers to Chinese silver grass, a species also known as Japanese stiltgrass.

ANDREW SANTINO: The Japanese stiltgrass is much more patient and kind for some reason. There it is. Yeah, I can’t take care of a lawn. You got land? Don’t you have land up by you?

House Hunting and Life Decisions

THEO VON: No, dude.

ANDREW SANTINO: You don’t have any land. I thought you’d have land out by you, dude.

THEO VON: I’m looking right now to try to just get a little bit more stuff, space, but some places it’s tough, and one place I’m looking at, it’s kind of over by the interstate, a little close to the interstate. So it’s loud in the yard.

ANDREW SANTINO: You don’t want that. Get away from that.

THEO VON: If, to yell if you’re, if you’re at the, you know, talking to somebody, if you’re like, do it.

ANDREW SANTINO: You really got to use your outside voices at a barbecue.

THEO VON: Yeah.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah.

THEO VON: So it’s a lot of that, man. You know? So I don’t know. I’m looking, and it’s kind of tough, you know, because I do podcast from home, that sort of thing.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah.

THEO VON: And, and, and, and, yeah. So it’s been a journey. And then it’s like, you know, sometimes it’s like, I’ll take, you know, do I get a house where, if I have a family, then we can live? You know, it’s like I start to, you know, you get caught in that space where it’s like, or do I just get a house for me? But if I do that, am I locking myself into the, you know, it’s like, but then maybe some of that’s just overthinking things, you know?

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah. Have you ever thought about doing a compound with friends or family? People come live with you. I mean, are you clean? Is your house squeaky clean?

THEO VON: Yeah.

ANDREW SANTINO: Are you a neat freak?

THEO VON: I mean, yeah, I’m pretty organized. I’m not, yeah, my house is clean.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah. I think, I think I’m, my dad was the son of a military man, so shoes can’t be out of place.

THEO VON: Yeah.

The OCD Sickness

ANDREW SANTINO: That’s like a, I have the sickness. I’m like, just put them, put it right there. Like my wife, I’ll be like, why? Those don’t need to be there. She’s like, why do you care? I’m like, I don’t know. It’s a sickness, dude. It’s like, just move them into the other thing. I think I’ve got, that’s like my, that’s my little OCD.

THEO VON: That’s your Vietnam.

ANDREW SANTINO: That’s my Vietnam is, where are your shoes? Put your shoes over there. That’s my Vietnam. I, flashbacks. Loose laces on the floor in mud, dude. Move it.

THEO VON: Oh, that’s my foot. Normandy, dude. It really is.

ANDREW SANTINO: And I’m Agent Orange, dude, so, you know, I’m going to come down on it, dude.

The Ginger Van Incident

THEO VON: I remember one time a f*ing van full of ginger people broke down on our street, and we’d never seen, like, a van full. They didn’t have, you know, they didn’t have it at the time or whatever.

ANDREW SANTINO: Right. And we weren’t allowed in a van for a long time. You know that, right. More than five was a, was a small ginger army. You know, US Government restricted more than five redheads at once. In a moving vehicle, I think it was. You could be in packs outside, because we’re controllable on foot, but in a van, dude.

THEO VON: But we’d never seen it. And I remember my dad, like four got out and he was fing, you could hear his fing temperature rising, dude. You could hear his f*ing neck straighten a little, like.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, what are you doing here, boys? Keep it moving.

THEO VON: And then five, and then six. They had one that was, like, kind of weak or whatever, and he got out at the end.

ANDREW SANTINO: We leave him in the back. Yeah, you got to. The smallest one must take up the rear because he’s got to protect from the back. And he’s got to be one of the first that could go.

Ginger’s traveling in packs is a dangerous, dangerous thing. You know, we don’t really see each other like that. When I see another redhead, there was a redheaded girl yesterday working this event that we were at, and she was like my brother. And I said, let’s take it easy, because I don’t know if you’re an enemy or a friend yet. You know, a regular person I meet on the street, hey, how you doing? Another redhead, I go, I’d like to see the resume first.

THEO VON: Yeah.

ANDREW SANTINO: Before I let you into my space. Because I don’t know what kind of ginger they are. There’s different levels.

THEO VON: Really? Is it really?

ANDREW SANTINO: Oh, big time.

The Albino Discussion

THEO VON: It’s almost like black people met albino guy or whatever. You know that guy I’m talking about? Yeah, that undercover black guy. Bring that guy up.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah. That’s got to be, there’s got to be a vetting process, you know. Can the albino black guy, does he say the N word?

THEO VON: Bring up a couple Al Bigas. Is that a term?

ANDREW SANTINO: It is now.

THEO VON: Can we say that or not?

ANDREW SANTINO: Look at that black albino guy with red hair.

THEO VON: Oh, that’s, what the f* is up, bro. That is the future, dude, bro, take my money, bro.

ANDREW SANTINO: Whatever he’s selling, and I don’t know if that’s more me or more, if he’s more red or more black. I don’t know what group he’d go. I mean, he’s invited to the cookout and has to have ring sunscreen, which is wild.

THEO VON: That’s f*ing sunlight Jackson, homie. Are you kidding me, dude? Are we going to get in trouble for saying Al Big?

ANDREW SANTINO: I don’t know, bro. It’s vague enough. There’s my boy, Blake Griffin. He’s a black, he’s a black redheaded. But he is, but he’s so handsome and tall and athletic that he kind of wanes away from the ginger side. You know, we’re usually pale, see through and frail. Right.

THEO VON: He’s able to kind of almost, he’s above it because of his height.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, he superseded it. Oh, he’s gone above and beyond.

THEO VON: That’s so rare in that community.

ANDREW SANTINO: I mean, that is, that is, I mean, that guy still looks, I mean, 2,000 plus black albino person stock photos, man. They took a lot of pictures of this guy.

THEO VON: Dude, is this fing Henry Rollins? I feel like that’s fing, bro. This is basically the albino Henry Rollins. Dude, we’re going to get in so much trouble for making fun of these guys.

ANDREW SANTINO: We’re not making fun of him. I’m showing some love.

THEO VON: Yeah, you’re right.

ANDREW SANTINO: I’m fascinated. When, look, you know what’s so funny is I’m, that 100% is Henry. Back to back. That’s him. That’s his alter ego.

THEO VON: Yeah. Oh, Henry Rollins.

The Extinction of Redheads

ANDREW SANTINO: Oh, Henry Rollins. No, dude, I think when I find red in other places, it’s kind of, it makes me feel that we’re still around. Oh, yeah, we’re fading fast. I mean, look, you can look it up. How many red, they said redheads were going to be dead by like 2045 or something like that.

THEO VON: Bring up a batch of them.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, that’s a, that’s close. Dude, that is a little too close for comfort for me. I don’t, I don’t want to be extinct in the next, you know, 20 years. I think redheads will be extinct 2060. Okay. They bumped it up so we’re moving. Oh, it’s a false claim. It’s debunked. All right, good.

THEO VON: Widely been debunked by geneticists and scientific organizations. But what do the people think?

ANDREW SANTINO: You know, it’s more about the street.

THEO VON: In the early 2000s, the Oxford Hair foundation circulated a claim that redheads would vanish in the future due to recessive nature of the red haired gene.

ANDREW SANTINO: It sounds like a wish, more than a thought. Than a hope. I mean, that’s that. Red hair results from mutations. Yeah, the mutant MC1R gene.

THEO VON: For someone to have red hair, they must inherit two copies of the variant gene, one from each parent. Because this gene is recessive, many people carry it without having red hair themselves. And it can skip generations before reappearing. Wow.

ANDREW SANTINO: I’m a mutant and I never yet I’ve never been booked on any Marvel stuff at all.

THEO VON: Dude, it’s like a f*ing Agatha Christie novel, dude. This is crazy, bro. It’s amazing. In short, while red hair will likely remain uncommon, it’s not going extinct ever. The gene will continue to be passed down quietly through generations, resurfacing whenever two carriers have children. It sounds like a romantic.

ANDREW SANTINO: Like a romantic murder mystery novel. It’s quiet. Resurfacing whenever two carriers have children. It will resurface.

THEO VON: I love that. Well, there is something kind of powerful that, it’s so unique, you know? And if you ever see somebody that has blue eyes and red hair, it definitely feels like they’re cheering on here.

ANDREW SANTINO: He’s, he’s got blue eyes and red hair. Right.

THEO VON: Fresh off the tap. It feels like they’re right off the tap.

ANDREW SANTINO: Like came out of this, out of the factory.

THEO VON: Just, yeah, just like, it feels like they could have salmon swimming upstream in their veins. They feel super clean.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, he’s still, he’s still warm from the, yeah, he’s still warm from being baked. Look at that. He’s still warm. See, I’ve got brown eyes. I’ve got the Italian side. Got the brown in my eyes, so I got brown and red it is. It’s a dangerous, dangerous duo.

Dating and Relaxing

THEO VON: Yeah, dude, relaxing is the thing now.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, you got to use, you’re, you’re done touring. No more you, for a little while.

THEO VON: Yeah. And it’s so nice. You’d have been, I’ll be going, going to football games. I’ve been trying to plan a date and have, and then I’ll go on the date, or do something like that.

ANDREW SANTINO: Are you going on a lot of dates? Are you dating right now or?

THEO VON: No, dude, I just ran into the most ridiculous thing. So I’m in an airplane, right? And the girl that was working in the airplane was cute.

ANDREW SANTINO: The flight attendant?

THEO VON: Yes.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah.

THEO VON: And I didn’t want to flirt with it because it’s her job. It’s a small space. Right. But I felt like she kind of looked at me a little more than just looking at. I felt like we made a little bit of a spark when we walked in.

ANDREW SANTINO: Sure. And did she know who you were?

THEO VON: I don’t know.

ANDREW SANTINO: Chances are high, maybe. Yeah.

The Flight Attendant Story

THEO VON: And she was pretty tall, too, so she could see me because she, you know, tall people can see a little bit more. So anyway, I get on the plane, I sit down, and then I’m like, and I don’t see her. She’s doing stuff. And then after a while, I was like, well, I got to go up there. I’m get a diet coke.

So I go up there and while she’s making it, she’s kind of going a little bit slow. And I was like, oh, I was kind of talking to her and stuff. And then, dude, I fed you. What a fing idiot. I was like, I said, well, I said, you should come to a comedy show sometime. You know, I said, I work as a comedian. If you’d ever want to come to a comedy show. Because we’d had some good conversations. She was asking me some questions back, and then she’s like, yeah, that sounds great. How should I get in touch with you or something? Or I was like, I’ll give you my email, right? And I was like, f*, why not a phone number?

ANDREW SANTINO: What are you doing?

THEO VON: I didn’t, well, first of all, I didn’t know if it’s unprofessional, them on their, I didn’t know how much you can hit on somebody on a plane. And it’s also a very small environment. If something gets weird or they feel threatened or something, or it’s, you know, it’s weird.

ANDREW SANTINO: It is a little, you’re a little too close for comfort, right? Can’t just walk away, right?

THEO VON: And we’re right there, so anybody could kind of overhear. It’s a small environment, you know, and everybody’s quiet. So I just, what if she’s like, you don’t do that. You just don’t know how people are going to react.

ANDREW SANTINO: That’s true. But I mean, if you were feeling it, you were feeling it. If she was obviously vibing with you, then you throw your, no, the email is, the email creates some separation where you go, this is my professional. If you want to come to a show, email me. You and your friends can come to the show.

THEO VON: Well, I didn’t know if she has marriage or whatever, and so I was like, f*. I don’t, I just, I don’t know. I’m always afraid. I think if someone is married or has a boyfriend, that I think that is a big deterrent. And it didn’t seem like she did. She didn’t have a wedding ring on. And she could just say, I guess I have a boyfriend. But I think there’s, I have a big, I have a lot of, I guess, fear around that part.

And so, yeah, I don’t know, dude, but this is the fing worst part. So she’s like, I was like, well, just, do you have a pen I can borrow? Just write it on a napkin at my seat or something. We’d been up there for a while, and some fing Asian woman, right, was at the bath. She’s banging on the fing bathroom door now, and nobody’s in there. And I was like, nobody’s in there. And she fing couldn’t put it all together, right? She couldn’t. So she’s still just standing there waiting.

And I was like, f, dude. And now she’s right. This Asian lady’s right up against me. And you know she’s going to go in there, make a fing soup or whatever. Those fing, you get a good Chinese person, they’ll fing make a soup in a f*ing.

ANDREW SANTINO: They close off the sink.

THEO VON: Yeah, bro, they’ll whip up a fing little bok choy fing back chowder in an airplane sink in 20 minutes, dude.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah.

THEO VON: You know Chinese people, you die walking into a Chinese friend. They fing put a pot right there, light up. They make a soup out of anything. They don’t give a f, dude.

ANDREW SANTINO: Right?

The Airplane Email Incident

THEO VON: They make soup immediately and they keep it moving. So I’m like, this b is trying to get in there to cook, you know.

ANDREW SANTINO: That’s why she was so anxious, for sure.

THEO VON: So I’m trying to get this lady’s email, and I’m like, and the pen wasn’t working good, dude. And now a line is building up for a bathroom that’s open, right? Like in this Asian lady. She’s wearing like three visors, fing glasses. She was so fing Asian, she wasn’t even there probably. She probably wasn’t even under all the stuff, right? You know, she probably, you probably had to order her online if you actually wanted her to be there, dude. But all the accoutrements and s* were right there.

So I’m trying to write the email, and the pen isn’t working good. And I’m having to write it against, like, you know, the plastic in an airplane. It’s kind of like, it’s not the best writing service. You’re writing against the wall that’s up by the bathrooms.

ANDREW SANTINO: And so probably textured, too. It’s probably bumpy and textured.

THEO VON: Yes. It was just a lot. So I finally got like four letters of the f*ing email. But like, I kept trying to like, etch it into the paper so you could see it if you put it by a light or whatever. The time has gotten too long. It’s so weird. It’s like, oh, yeah, oh, yeah. This lady’s just beating on a door. I think this door is even open by now. If she can’t figure out that she can just go in there and start a Bunsen burner onto the thing, right?

ANDREW SANTINO: Light it up, man. Get it moving.

THEO VON: So I finally give the lady the email, and it has like four letters on it. I just went sat down.

ANDREW SANTINO: That’s it. Oh, my God.

THEO VON: It was too hot. The space had gotten too hot.

ANDREW SANTINO: No, it’s fine. No, not a loser. You get to keep swinging. That’s the best part.

THEO VON: What? But imagine this, okay? So this guy fing came in the airplane. He gave me a fing half email, email address. I should have just left my fingerprints on her back a little bit or something. Or just f*ing, you know, she was very fair. I should have just written it on her arm with my fingers.

ANDREW SANTINO: Maybe you leave half the email to see how creative she is. Can you figure out the rest? Give her just like, give a girl four digits instead of seven. See if she can figure it out.

THEO VON: And then I was just sitting there like, dear God, what a f*ing loser.

ANDREW SANTINO: There’s a long flight left, too.

THEO VON: Who gives somebody their email?

ANDREW SANTINO: Well, yeah, I mean, you know, maybe she found it creative and cute. Maybe it was cute. If she really wanted to hit you up, she could find you. You’re findable, dude.

THEO VON: I know, but it just kind of broke my heart. Or it didn’t break my heart, but it was just like, dude, what? F*ing just, what are you doing?

ANDREW SANTINO: Just give it to her.

THEO VON: You’re like the guy that runs to third base and then it goes. Everyone wants to tell the pitch or something for no reason. Like, you know, it’s like, just f*ing go home, fly.

ANDREW SANTINO: Get to home plate, open it was wide open.

Taking Time Off

THEO VON: So anyway, man, that was exciting, dude.

ANDREW SANTINO: And now you’re just going to take some time.

THEO VON: But yeah, I’m taking some time, dude. Yeah, well, it’s just nice. It’s like the first time where I haven’t had like something looming that feels like a lot. You know, that getting out there and touring can feel like a lot. Dude. You’re doing, we have your, you have the new golf show.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, my golf show. And then I’m, which I’m coming to a close in this year. We’re finishing this season. And then finally I get kind of like an open space to just do dates on the road. I’m doing a bunch of like new work, a new hour, and working out in clubs again. I wanted to go backwards and work in some fun, little smaller rooms. Like, I’m doing Punch in San Francisco and Tempe Improv. And I just wanted to like, do a bunch of like little clubs and then casinos to just kind of like really feel it again.

Because I had toured so hard that I was like, I kind of want to feel it again and go back out in the new year. So I’m doing a couple of clubs here before the end of the year, and then casinos in the new year to try to feel it out again and jump around the country. Honestly, a lot of it, too, is so I can go see people again. You know, go to a casino one night and then go see a friend and, you know, go back to New York and all that stuff. Kind of jump around.

THEO VON: Yeah. One day I would like to have a, maybe if I get married or get in a relationship, then I would travel with my wife and go like in a camper or something.

ANDREW SANTINO: Oh, I love that.

THEO VON: We start a family and maybe do some shows, but also just go see a lot of places, because you miss out on some places. And it is nice to be able to schedule a place around like where friends are, you know.

Touring with a Partner

ANDREW SANTINO: Who does that? Well, I mean, I don’t know if he does it anymore, but I ran into Regan, was with his girlfriend or, I don’t, I don’t quite know. I don’t know.

THEO VON: I’m being Brian Regan.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, Regan’s girlfriend or whatever. Partner or whatever. And they were on a bus together, and he was like, we’re just touring the country, doing shows, goofing around, stopping at places that we feel like stopping. I was like, that is the move. My wife just doesn’t really want to go to all these places because she’s got her own thing, you know what I mean? She got her own career, so it’s hard for me to pull her out.

But it does seem like a cool little fantasy to get in the bus and stop by cool spots, you know, s* that I never get to see because we’re on the road half of the time you’re in a city, and then you got to go. And then you’re in a new city and you’re like, oh, that’d be, we got to go. You got a jet so much, you know. But also after living on a bus with Bobby for a couple of months.

THEO VON: Yeah. What was that? You were on the bus with him?

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, we did the bus tour last year. It was really hard. It was really hard.

THEO VON: What are some of the toughest parts about living on a bus with Bobby?

Life on the Bus with Bobby Lee

ANDREW SANTINO: I mean, you know, the number one rule when you’re on a tour bus is no pooping on the bus. You got to wait to poop. I mean, and you can schedule it. You make, you make an internal agreement saying, you know, to yourself, we will poop when we get to a place. And he pooped on the bus within the first week. I mean, he broke the rule within week one. You can’t poop on the bus week one.

THEO VON: How many weeks was the tour?

ANDREW SANTINO: It was like three months. Oh, my God. He broke rule week one. And then his schedule is crazy, and…

THEO VON: His legs don’t even, dude, I actually walked in on the bathroom one time. His legs aren’t on the floor while he poops. And I feel like it’s so much harder to poop when you can’t get traction from the floor.

ANDREW SANTINO: No grip. Yeah, he’s, he’s not grounded at all. Well, we put a squatty potty under there, so his feet do touch something. Oh, that’s for him to feel regulated.

THEO VON: Because I walked in one time, he was literally squeezing his body down like a tube of toothpaste trying to get it out of him.

ANDREW SANTINO: You have to roll it now with him. If you don’t roll down with him, gravity doesn’t do all the work for him, you know, because Koreans keep most of it up and high. So you got to really kind of massage him. A lot of times, I’ll massage his shoulders and back. If he says, I got to go to the bathroom, I’ll say, well, give me an hour with you first. So I’ll roll down his back, roll his sides out. You know, you have to. You know, you really have to.

THEO VON: Oh, he’s like a philo doe, brother. He’s like a, he’s a very rare doe. Look at him.

Bobby’s Weight Loss Journey

ANDREW SANTINO: He is. And you got to let him rest now. He’s getting skinnier, though, man. He doesn’t look like that anymore. He’s on Ozempic, and he’s flying free.

THEO VON: No, he’s not.

ANDREW SANTINO: He’s on Wegovy, which is the alternative, because he threw up on Ozempic pretty bad. He was sick as a dog. Every time we went out to eat, he’d get sick, and then he was like, I think I can’t do it. So then he switched up and then he started taking Wegovy, which is like another alternative. And he’s been incredible. I think he lost, he’ll tell, he’ll say the real number, but I think it was 30 something pounds. But look at how thin he looks there, man.

THEO VON: Oh, my God, how thin he looks there. That’s crazy. He looks great.

ANDREW SANTINO: He’s feeling much better. He’s still looking for love, though. His whole journey is now. He’s looking for love.

THEO VON: You can’t look too hard.

ANDREW SANTINO: He’s searching, bro.

THEO VON: He can’t look too hard, man.

ANDREW SANTINO: He’s staring deep, deep into that abyss of the dating pool. And also the apps. You’re not on the apps.

THEO VON: I’m not on the apps.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah. He lives and dies by those things. He loves them.

THEO VON: He does.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, but he doesn’t commit.

The Dating App Trap

THEO VON: Did you ever do the apps when you were dating?

ANDREW SANTINO: No, man, that world seems so dark to me. Also, I see all my friends following the same traps where they hit up a girl, they talk for a second, then they never meet up or they never link. It ends in a weird like blank space. There’s no there there. There’s truly no like risk, reward. It’s almost like…

THEO VON: Yeah, dude, it’s…

Dating Apps and Modern Romance

ANDREW SANTINO: It doesn’t matter if it happens or not. So there’s no risk. If you schedule a real date, you meet someone in the real world, the girl on the plane, real risk. You’re on a plane. Here’s my number or my email. Does it work? We’ll see.

On the app, it doesn’t matter, bro. On the app, they start. He talks to a bunch of girls and he stops talking to them when he feels like they’re not engaged or he’s over it, dude.

THEO VON: Yeah, I remember I was on the app one time years ago, and it was when Steven Avery was popping off, the guy that was killing people at that used car lot or whatever. And all my pictures were of him.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah.

THEO VON: And remember that one kid? Yeah, that was definitely one of them. And Brendan Dassey, who was like his…

ANDREW SANTINO: Dassey was his nephew or something, right?

THEO VON: And they were both, I think, retarded or whatever. And they…

ANDREW SANTINO: I don’t know if that’s it. I think they were both just back in the day, we just called them quiet men. They were just quiet men. Brendan Dassey was a misunderstood quiet boy. Now, I don’t really know the, I don’t remember this case in full.

THEO VON: My buddies played Dassey on…

ANDREW SANTINO: Dassey’s the unlockable player.

THEO VON: He’s got his screen name or something.

ANDREW SANTINO: Oh, I thought you meant he had an avatar. You could play as Dassey. I played NBA 2K with Dassey.

THEO VON: He’s just standing by a burn barrel, just f*ing smoking a dart with his buddies. He doesn’t even know he’s cooking wieners. Like, there’s a deceased body and he doesn’t even know. He just thinks it’s an open fire. He’s just…

ANDREW SANTINO: He’s always in the gulag. He lives in the Gulag, bro.

THEO VON: He’s just cooking four franks on a stick over a burning body. Doesn’t even know. But anyway, I put a lot of Brendan Dassey photos on there and a lot of Steven Avery photos, because I was like, oh, this is topical right now. Chicks will see this. A lot of chicks love crime.

ANDREW SANTINO: They love crime stuff.

THEO VON: Yeah. And then I put the cousin from Home Alone. Remember that kid with the glasses?

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, I loved him. Fuller.

THEO VON: Yeah?

ANDREW SANTINO: You’re going to wet the bed, Fuller. You know who that was, right? You know what actor that was? That’s Macaulay Culkin’s brother. That’s the kid from Succession. Yeah. What’s his name? Why can’t I think of his name? Kieran Culkin? Kieran Culkin, that’s him as a kid. You’re going to wet the bed, Fuller.

THEO VON: Yeah, dude. I put a picture of him and then two pictures of me, and they got so pissed at me. You can’t put accused killers or whatever. And I was like, get f*ed, guys.

ANDREW SANTINO: Well, you’re just talking about what’s going on right now. That’s what’s happening in the news right now.

THEO VON: So they had some sh*t or whatever. But anyway, that was the last time I was on, and I think that was probably about nine years ago. I think also I just don’t want to be addicted to that stuff, and I don’t want to get to the part where you don’t get a response from somebody or you don’t get something, and it makes me feel bad, you know?

ANDREW SANTINO: You feel like it’s a shot at you or something.

THEO VON: Right. I think I’m too sensitive with that sh*t. And I also don’t like somebody being able to tell me no if I’m not right there. You know what I’m saying?

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah. It’s easy. Give it to my face.

THEO VON: Right?

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah. No me to my face.

THEO VON: Yeah. Email me and tell me no. Okay.

The Perfect Date

ANDREW SANTINO: I hope that flight attendant, wherever she is, I hope she’s watching. And you got to reach out to Theo, take him out on a date. What’s your perfect date? What is Theo’s perfect date?

THEO VON: Oh, that’s a nice question. You know what it is, dude? I realized it’s just going for a walk somewhere. Something easy, just through a nice nature trail or something like that. Which sounds very much like a f*ing…

ANDREW SANTINO: Like you’re going to create a murder mystery then. Yeah. Well, dude, did you see this thing with Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell? She did a post about their anniversary, 12 years or something. And she wrote on her Instagram, yeah, where he’s hugging her there. Which, by the way, I thought it was, I thought he was hugging his daughter. It looks like a child.

THEO VON: That’s his…

ANDREW SANTINO: That’s her. And it says 12th wedding anniversary. To the man who once said to me, “I would never kill you. A lot of men have killed their wives at a certain point. Even though I’m heavily incentivized to kill you, I never would.” And then a bunch of people were like, this is not healthy. She’s just goofing. She’s just playing around. Look at that. Dateline NBC wrote, screenshotted.

THEO VON: What?

ANDREW SANTINO: Like they want to use it for something in the future in case something goes down.

THEO VON: I don’t know.

ANDREW SANTINO: She’s just being playful.

Why Women Love True Crime

THEO VON: She’s just goofing around. I think one reason why women like true crime and murder mystery is because at least the man’s committing. At least if this guy’s going to kill…

ANDREW SANTINO: Me, he’s going to go all the way.

THEO VON: And it’s commitment.

ANDREW SANTINO: Right? That’s why. That’s why they like it.

THEO VON: Women want commitment. So it’s like, oh, this guy is at least willing to fing actually kill me instead of some fing py a guy who comes by and just kind of stabs me and pokes me and makes me get my nails and cooter shaved up and all this stuff just to waste my fing time. At least this fing decent man has come over here and committed to fing crime and committed to murder.

ANDREW SANTINO: I am fascinated with the idea that why women like it so much. My wife, she doesn’t like it the way that I see a lot of women love murder mystery because I think it affirms their belief that any man could be a killer. It’s almost like verifying the fact that they go, yeah, Theo’s sweet, but could be a killer.

I mean, I think they think that about every single dude could be a killer for some reason. It’s ingrained in their DNA. It’s got to be nature protective. Years of nature of thinking, if the village is running out of food, the big Neanderthals are probably going to be like, we got to kill some of these women. They’re eating the food. We got to get rid of them. We’ll go find new women.

I mean, that’s got to be some weird old school human instinct. And also, don’t females, don’t the mantises, don’t they eat the guys after they have sex with them? Isn’t that what they do? The praying mantis, I think they kill the man the moment that they’re done getting impregnated. There’s got to be bugs that do that, crazy bugs.

THEO VON: There’s fing people in Memphis doing this sht. How many animals?

ANDREW SANTINO: Sexual cannibalism. Female praying mantises will do it. They’ll eat the male during or after mating. You got to wait till I’m done. Don’t eat me while we’re going at it.

THEO VON: Unless it’s right after I bust.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, right. Take me now. Yeah. Or right when I’m doing it. That would be hot.

THEO VON: Yeah.

ANDREW SANTINO: Kill me right when I’m doing it.

Animal Kingdom Behavior

THEO VON: What other animals? I believe it’s male raccoons will eat the children of a female raccoon so that she’ll go right back into heat to make another one so they can have sex again.

ANDREW SANTINO: I’m lucky that didn’t happen with me. You get a redhead baby, you’re like, I got to kill just to get another one. This is the one I want. Male raccoons do do that are known…

THEO VON: To sometimes kill and even eat the younger females. And one main reason is exactly that. To make the female go into heat again. The behavior is a form of infanticide. And it serves as an evolutionary purpose similar to what’s observed in lions and some primate species. Wow.

ANDREW SANTINO: God, that’s wild. And female raccoons can’t become pregnant while nursing. They must finish raising the litter before entering. I can’t say that estrus.

THEO VON: When a male kills her kits, she will return to estrus within days, allowing him to sire his own offspring rather than raising another male’s. Wow, that’s insane, bro.

ANDREW SANTINO: That’s some Stephen King sh*t.

THEO VON: I mean, if that happened in human society, it would be absolutely crazy.

ANDREW SANTINO: Kill your own just so they get hot again. That’s like a Black Mirror episode. In the future, you’re like, we need to make the perfect human. So every time they have a kid, if it’s not exactly what they want, you know, they’re doing now, people, you can pick things. They’re engineering kids now. You can pick the specifics of your kid.

You want it to be a certain height category, weight, hair, eye color. We’re getting into, we’re playing God. We’re playing God. It’s going to backfire tremendously bad. Sometimes I think Shohei Ohtani was made in a lab. You see that dude? You’re like, do you know a lot of six seven Japanese dudes? 265. You’re like, this dude was made in a lab to be the greatest baseball player of all time.

THEO VON: Where was he made?

ANDREW SANTINO: What lab was he made? I mean, look at the size of this man. Arguably the greatest baseball player I think I’ve ever seen live. It blows my mind. If you watch him live, you’ve seen him live.

THEO VON: It’s unbelievable.

ANDREW SANTINO: It’s shocking how good he is.

THEO VON: And he can’t even tell us how much fun he’s having because he doesn’t even speak English.

ANDREW SANTINO: That’s why he does that, though. He doesn’t want you to know. He stays, he stays, he stays. That way he’s not trying to learn.

Shohei Ohtani’s Origins

THEO VON: Shohei Ohtani was not made in a lab. Yeah, he’s a real human. Born in Japan. He was born in Mizusawa, Iwate prefecture, known as Oshu.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, Oshu.

THEO VON: Wow.

ANDREW SANTINO: In Japan were both athletes in his youth. His mother played badminton. Oh, that answers that. I guess badminton players always make the best baseball player, bro.

THEO VON: Imagine how savage his mother is at badminton.

ANDREW SANTINO: She’s the baddest b*h. His father was an amateur baseball player. I did know that. But a factory worker for the most part.

THEO VON: Oh, that’s cool.

ANDREW SANTINO: The rumors claiming he was created in Japanese laboratory are satirical. That’s right. Humorous. That’s what we’re doing here.

Mike Rowe and Dirty Jobs

THEO VON: We’ll figure it out. But, dude, everything’s getting outsourced now. Dude, everything’s bro. We’re doing this new thing with Mike Rowe where we’re going to do dirty jobs.

ANDREW SANTINO: Mike Rowe?

THEO VON: Yeah.

ANDREW SANTINO: I love that guy.

THEO VON: Oh, he’s great.

ANDREW SANTINO: God, dude, dude.

THEO VON: Every time he talks, I can hear my mother, which is crazy.

ANDREW SANTINO: It’s like he gets women pregnant by the baritone in his…

THEO VON: Get rid of that statement. That’s crazy to say, right?

ANDREW SANTINO: Keep it. No, I keep it.

THEO VON: Okay.

ANDREW SANTINO: It makes sense.

THEO VON: I don’t think so. Let me give you my email.

ANDREW SANTINO: Just give me half. Is Rowe married? I’m not sure if he was a single guy. My God, he’s doing fine. Yeah. Let me do some cleanup. I mean, and it’s very newsworthy because he has inflection that jumps up and down.

THEO VON: He worked…

ANDREW SANTINO: No, he’s single. He’s never been married. Been in some long terms, though.

THEO VON: God. He worked on QVC whenever he first started.

ANDREW SANTINO: That’s how he got to start.

Supporting American-Made Products

THEO VON: Yeah, no shit. And so we’re doing this thing where it’s like small American companies, like mom and pop companies, trying to create an avenue for them to sell Christmas gifts to other people. So we’re going to do this episode that’s all about that and feature a bunch of different products.

ANDREW SANTINO: It’s kind of slicing out Amazon, so to speak. Right. You’re like, take it back to the local shops.

THEO VON: Yeah. Just so then it’s almost like you get two gifts. I get to get somebody a gift, but also get to give another person a gift by having, by buying something from them.

ANDREW SANTINO: You know, like what Tom’s shoes did, kind of. You know, where you buy a shoe, they give a shoe to somebody.

THEO VON: Yeah.

ANDREW SANTINO: I don’t even know if that’s true, but…

THEO VON: Well, all these products are American made, so everything is purely American made. But one of the things we’re noticing, dude, is there’s nothing made here.

ANDREW SANTINO: No.

THEO VON: If we shut off China completely, we would be living off of beef jerky and…

ANDREW SANTINO: Which I love.

THEO VON: And wind chimes.

ANDREW SANTINO: Okay, bro. And garden gnomes. We’re still producing those crazy, brother. You go past the nursery down the street, there’s a hundred thousand of them. Who’s still buying these? But they’re still made here. And by the way, the more I see companies that are trying to do the made in the USA thing, the prices go skyrocket.

THEO VON: That’s the…

ANDREW SANTINO: That’s the worst part that you’re like, I want to support them, too, but my God.

THEO VON: Well, it’s just, no, there’s no infrastructure. I mean, you can’t get hardly anything done here is what we’re seeing. Right?

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah.

THEO VON: But some of that starting to change. There’s people that want to do it. There’s this Good Ranchers company that is sourcing meat that’s just in America. There’s American Giant which is finally created an avenue for getting cotton ginned here and that they can use to create textiles and shirts. But it’s like electronics…

The Technology Gap

ANDREW SANTINO: No, that’s gone. Nothing. We lost that a long time ago. We were never going to. I mean, but also they make the best electronical shit, man. Have you seen in Japan, they’ve got those streets that have kinetic energy that stores energy for you. When you walk down some sidewalks in Japan, it stores kinetic energy as you walk in the sidewalks. Look at that. So you press down and it takes the kinetic energy and stores it for energy usage in the future, brother.

There’s a pothole on my street that’s been there for nine years. We can’t get that shit f*ing fixed. And they got kinetic energy sidewalks.

THEO VON: I mean, yeah, that’s where Mike Rowe keeps his voice in that pothole. That thing’s deep.

ANDREW SANTINO: I live down here.

THEO VON: But, dude, there’s… yeah, they have a sidewalk over there that can tell if you’re gay or not too.

ANDREW SANTINO: They really?

THEO VON: Yeah.

ANDREW SANTINO: Damn. Isn’t that crazy advanced?

THEO VON: But, dude, that’s a scary day to take your son for a walk. Let’s see what happens here, fella.

ANDREW SANTINO: They took the idea of a… what was it when we were a kid? What was it called? There it is.

THEO VON: That’s the road, and that’s us just painting.

ANDREW SANTINO: That’s me and you just walking around. Now, if you come when you’re on that block, that’s how they know. Yeah, then they got you one of us. That’s for sure.

THEO VON: Dude, bro, it’s… yeah, that’s the kind of…

ANDREW SANTINO: That’s out of pocket.

THEO VON: But that’s great, though. That’s that rainbow street. But the craziest thing was, remember they put all that rainbow and the black pride stuff right next to each other. And meanwhile, in black culture, they do not accept that.

ANDREW SANTINO: It’s not on the same block. They want that. Yeah, they’re like, move that to the other block.

THEO VON: Put that in the cold set.

ANDREW SANTINO: That shit is a dead end. Put that shit on the dead end.

Smart Toilets and Privacy Concerns

THEO VON: Dude, technology is getting so crazy, man. Did you see the f? I gave her my fing email. Could you even imagine?

ANDREW SANTINO: Half an email is even worse.

THEO VON: What? I tried as fing hard as I could. She gave me the pin, dude. And then just sitting in my chair and just being like, bro, why did you go up there? You got to Diet Coke and give woman half of an email address. You are fing…

Oh, no. Speaking of technology, dude, there’s a toilet. Bring up that toilet. There’s a toilet now. They want to be able to, was it film you while you’re doing poops or whatever?

ANDREW SANTINO: Yep. They film you while you’re…

THEO VON: They want to be able to test your poo poo.

ANDREW SANTINO: Oh, I like that. Test me to see if I’m healthy.

THEO VON: Yeah, but f it, dude. What if you just had a fing night where you had a couple, you know, you had a couple barks, root beers and some pizza, right?

ANDREW SANTINO: It’s going to let you know how bad it was for you. That’s good. I want to know. I want to know.

THEO VON: And bro, can we discontinue hot honey pizzas? Because those are making pizza…

ANDREW SANTINO: Why is that a thing? I don’t understand honey on the pizza. They put in that. They always do that. They go pepperoni, jalapeno, and hot honey. That’s the new shit. I don’t like that. When did honey make its way onto that?

THEO VON: It’s just people that want to shoot more. There’s people that can’t…

ANDREW SANTINO: Kohler makes a tiny camera in your toilet to analyze the contents.

THEO VON: Some smart litter boxes can monitor our pet’s habits and health. So having a camera in our human toilet bowl seems inevitable.

ANDREW SANTINO: No, it doesn’t. I don’t need a camera in there. I don’t want it to watch me. I don’t want that stuff posted. The Kohler’s uploading now to Facebook.

THEO VON: Ricky just shit. Ricky’s shit gets 4 stars.

ANDREW SANTINO: See my little wiener barely making it over my balls first thing in the morning when I’m shitting on Facebook. My dad would post 100% on accident. He’d be like, help me take this down. I posted the Kohler clip. Andrew, Andrew, I posted the Kohler clip. Please help me take it down.

THEO VON: It was a thick piss.

ANDREW SANTINO: Damn it.

THEO VON: Look, sometimes I pee sitting down. They’re calculating it wrong. That would be my fear, dude, but it says it right here. The $599 Decoda clamps over the rim like a toilet bowl cleaner, pointing an optical sensor at your excretions and secretions. Excretions and secretions. It then analyzes the images to detect any blood and reviews your gut health and hydration status. Depending on the plan you choose, the fee is between $70 and $156 per year.

The Fear of Knowing Too Much

ANDREW SANTINO: We need to go back to my grandfather who never went to the doctor. He was like, I don’t, I’ll figure it out. It’ll get me when it gets me. My grandfather never wanted to know. This is something interesting. There’s a couple of friends of ours, not my liberty to say, that went and got a full body test to make sure they’re okay. And one of our friends came back with something, you know, and it scared him a little bit, but he got it taken care of. It was benign, so luckily it was okay.

But I got the fear of… he’s like, you should go do it. And I thought, I don’t know if I want to know. Do you want to know? I think just let it happen when it happens. I don’t want impending doom. I just want to live life until it’s over. I think there’s so much noise stressing us out that more noise about our existence, I don’t really like this.

What’s this comet that’s coming at us right now that I think might hit us or whatever? I don’t want to know. Just let it hit us. Don’t tell me it’s going to hit us. I don’t want to know it’s going to happen because then I’m preparing for it to happen. I’d rather just keep living free until it happens.

THEO VON: But what if you’re living free and your neighbor’s just digging a huge hole in his yard to f*ing hide?

ANDREW SANTINO: Let him live. Then that’s it. That’s his choice. People build bunkers. People have been building bunkers for how long? I mean, as far as we know, the Denver airport is a big bunker. I mean, and they’ve told us for years. They’re like, no, no, that’s not true. And then the older you get, the government goes back on what it said.

Remember they said there was no UFOs when we were kids? There’s no f*ing UFOs. And then a year ago, there’s like, yeah, there’s UFOs. Yeah, yeah, we got… and we got a bunch of them, too. We keep collecting them.

THEO VON: And they’re in the water there. Said that.

ANDREW SANTINO: Remember that ship living in the water? Yeah. They’re getting transferred. You’ve been to underground in New York? You’re like, this is where they live for sure, dude. It’s Hasidic Jews in the underground protecting the aliens. We got a conspiracy theory.

The Secret Tunnel Discovery

THEO VON: Remember the Hasidic Jews, they busted them in that f*ing tunnel in the underground. And they never even know.

ANDREW SANTINO: They wiped that away. They were like, we’re never talking about that again.

THEO VON: There’s a dirty mattress. And they never even…

ANDREW SANTINO: The secret synagogue. That’s what it was. That was the wildest shit I think I’ve ever seen in my life. Yeah, they busted them crawling out of those things and then out of a sidewalk. Yeah, the one that was… dude is on the sidewalk was probably the most wild photo. Oh, dude, speaking of wild, it was…

THEO VON: A sidewalk that judges you to. That knows it. So it was like banker extortionist right there.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, look at… they got him crawling out of a grate. That is insane. Dude.

THEO VON: Dude, look, the sidewalk is just rattling off right there.

Trump’s Time Magazine Cover

ANDREW SANTINO: Do you want to talk about a weird photo? Dude, did you see this Time magazine picture of Trump? Did you see his response? It made me laugh so hard. They took a photo of them. They said, you know, they put him on Time magazine for the hostages, and they wrote “His Triumph.”

THEO VON: You know, that’s a picture they used.

ANDREW SANTINO: Well, look at his neck. Yeah, he commented about it. He was like, they deleted my hair. I mean, you zoom in on that guy’s neck. It’s banana. That is the worst.

THEO VON: Oh, that neck. It’s definitely… it gives long nut.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, that’s long nut neck. That’s long nut. Now, honestly, look. I mean, look what they did. Put the sun in his hair. He’s like, they deleted my hair. They don’t like my hair. I mean, it does look photoshopped. It’s hilarious.

THEO VON: They fed him on this. “How Gaza Heals.” That whole thing was just a fing bunch of bullshit.

ANDREW SANTINO: You think they were going to give him this is why it’s funny. Time magazine wasn’t going to praise him all the way. Of course they were going to put a bad photo. You think they were going to give you the photo of your choice? Come on. No f*ing way.

By the way, I think about that all the time when I take photos with fans of how stupid I fing look. And then when I do die, they’re going to use one of these dumb fing photos of me. Half closed eyes looking the other way. Blurry, dumbheaded. Every time I take a photo, I’m sure I look like a f*ing idiot when I take one on the road.

So when people want photos now, I always go, hey, man. They go, hey, can I get a photo? I go, yeah, can I selfie it so I can just take it of us that way?

THEO VON: I know.

ANDREW SANTINO: I’m like, hey, then I know. I know what I look… I said, like a fat, dumb, red moron. They deleted my hair. Oh, disappeared my hair. That’s what it was.

THEO VON: Disappeared my hair.

ANDREW SANTINO: They disappeared my hair.

Kid Rock’s White House

THEO VON: Dude, I’m hanging out with. I was with Kid Rock the other night, and he calls Trump, dude. It’s like f*.

ANDREW SANTINO: He’s got him on speed dial.

THEO VON: It’s like 1am he calls him. He’s like, let’s go. Trump answers. They’re f*ing talking.

ANDREW SANTINO: I’m like, dude, what is going on? How is his house, by the way?

THEO VON: It was awesome. Kid Rock’s house.

ANDREW SANTINO: I’ve heard it’s wild, right? It looks like the White House. Is that true?

THEO VON: Dude, Bob’s a nice guy, man. He’s thoughtful. He’s, you know, he’s Kid Rock, but he’s also like, you know. He’s also fing complete fing.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, it looks like the White House, right? Isn’t that. It’s a dupe of the White House.

THEO VON: Yeah, that’s it right there.

ANDREW SANTINO: God, that’s bananas to me.

THEO VON: And you can see it from. You can see it from town. If you’re at a restaurant, it’s pretty cool.

ANDREW SANTINO: It’s perched up on the hill.

THEO VON: Yeah, that’s Nashville.

ANDREW SANTINO: Or. Where is that?

Nashville Music Scene

THEO VON: Yeah, that’s a natural, dude. Last week we went to NBA Youngboy, which was dope. We went to. I went and watched Ella Langley play, which was awesome. And this kid, Dylan Marlowe, have you ever heard of him?

ANDREW SANTINO: I don’t think so, but I’m really bad when it comes to that kind of stuff. That group I was playing in the hallway. I’m in love with them and I’d forget their name.

THEO VON: Oh, Cameron Marlowe, sorry. Dylan Marlowe is great. I’ve watched him. But Cameron Marlowe, this guy.

ANDREW SANTINO: Is this his brother? Are they related?

THEO VON: No, no.

ANDREW SANTINO: Oh, wow. Handsome f*ing dude. Yeah.

THEO VON: I didn’t look at him like that.

ANDREW SANTINO: I am. I’m looking at him like that.

THEO VON: Yeah, f* him, then.

ANDREW SANTINO: I might. I always figure half of it’s got to be talent, half’s got to be handsome. He’s a handsome cat.

THEO VON: You know, I will say this, now that I think about it a little bit more, which I’m not going to think about a lot. He’s a little bit handsome, but he is, bro. Sings like gut. I mean, just like country. I don’t even know. Gospel, country. God, it’s just like. It’s a lot. Phenomenal, though. And then we went and saw your boy. Dermot Kennedy the other night. He’s Irish.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, yeah. One of my own.

The Gathering of the Juggalos

ANDREW SANTINO: You know what I need to do with you? Truly? Because I’ve been watching a lot of videos on TikTok. I went down a rabbit hole. There’s a really pretty woman who goes to these. The Juggle. The Gathering of the Juggalos. And she gives you tips on how to operate in that space. Do you know what the poo dollar is?

So at the Juggalo when you go to ICP shows, there’ll be money on the ground all over the place, but it’s wrapped in poo. Somebody pooed in it. And then they film you picking up a poo dollar and she’s giving you tips on how to not get caught picking up poo dollars.

THEO VON: Oh, that’s good.

ANDREW SANTINO: That’s very sweet of her.

THEO VON: She’s a cool chick. Let’s see if we have.

ANDREW SANTINO: She seems great. I mean I love watching her videos. She’s giving you tips for the gathering of the Juggalos.

THEO VON: There’s a girl, right?

ANDREW SANTINO: Is that her? People get so up here that they pass out for 12 hours and don’t.

THEO VON: Feel or hear or see a thing because they’re asleep. Gathering of the Juggalos in Thornville, Ohio.

ANDREW SANTINO: The gathering of the juggalos is a 12 out of 10.

THEO VON: Dude, this chick is up.

ANDREW SANTINO: Huh? They’re throwing full cans of faggoing people as they’re taking wristbands. And so when you’re just a dead body laying on your cot for 12 hours, people come up to you and with all of your dude. Enjoying a 12 hour nap, you got to have a tent. You got to have a safe place to sleep. Because I know a lot of ninjas that are out here passing out on the grass and just laying there. Because they got in with their last buck so they don’t have. So they’re passing out the road wherever they can sleep until the sun comes up.

Dude, we’re here together. We’re here to have a good time. We’re here to not give a. Because society doesn’t accept us. So we’re going to accept everybody that’s here being accepted plus 20 points.

THEO VON: Those people are asleep, you idiot.

ANDREW SANTINO: You can’t mess with people that are sleeping. Dude, he’s just recharging after being partied out all day.

THEO VON: Dude, that chick, is that a lesbian? Who was that lady?

AI and the Future of Entertainment

ANDREW SANTINO: She’s A.I. dude, this is the new world. We’ll never know if these people are real. The amount of times I’m fooled now by AI, it’s getting out of control. It’s also. I don’t know why. Sora. That’s what’s called.

THEO VON: That’s a new thing.

ANDREW SANTINO: Sora is making more. Maybe it’s my feed. There’s more Kobe Bryant videos than I’ve ever seen. And they have him just. Yeah, they have him dunking on old women in the gym and shit. This is Ohtani’s mom. Oh, that’s Ohtani’s mom. Wow, that’s a badminton champ right there.

THEO VON: Sore or. That’s real.

ANDREW SANTINO: That’s Sora. Sora. But that. How would I know? You were like, Ohtani’s mom is a champ. How would I know?

THEO VON: And it’s not even as great as it can be. It’s going to be weird. What do you think happens with the future of, will they still continue to use actors? What will they do?

ANDREW SANTINO: I don’t know, man. I talked to a guy literally yesterday, who creates. He has a company that does simulators for golf, right? And he was talking to me about the simulation technology that they use for golf. And then he’s like, eventually, you may not even have to need to go play the course. We will have everything feel, hear, smell. It will feel like you’re in there. The temperature will be the same as it is on the location. You’ll feel like you’re playing with your group. I mean, we’re uploaded into that. Into that metaverse or whatever it.

When he was talking about it because he was super intellectual and I’m an idiot, and it scared me a little bit because I thought, well, then are they going to need. Are they going to need that stuff? I mean, I just think. I don’t know what the business is going to look like. But I do know live entertainment will always. You will need to go see somebody live. I hope. I’m praying that people will still want to go feel that human interaction, you know, in the same way that young people are getting into more analog shit, you know?

This guy I was talking to yesterday, his son is a young man and he was like, he likes records, he likes CDs and tapes. He thinks it’s cool. Because it’s throwback, you know? And I think that will have a resurgence in its own right. But eventually everything is going to be so digital, it’ll be an afterthought. There’ll be. I don’t know, I hate to think of it because I do want creators to still create, but I think one of the only forms that will exist, unfortunately, would be live.

I’m probably wrong, but I think people still want to see people live. But as far as entertainment goes, if you think someone’s not going to get home after a 12 hour workday where they busted their ass doing something all day long, they get home, they kiss their kids and their wife, they put the kids to bed and they sit down on the couch and instead of scrolling, they go, “Hey, will you show me a movie where the rock is a pancake chef and he’s got to get into a fist fight over overcooked pancakes with Jason Statham.” And it’s like, bum, bum. And that’s what they make. You know what I mean? I don’t think it’s healthy, but you know that’s going to happen.

THEO VON: Or it’s my wife’s birthday. Can you make, can you make a collage?

ANDREW SANTINO: I forgot a gift. Can you make something right now? And 3D print? It’s in your f*ing living room already. Yeah, remember in Back to the Future when they made that pizza? Do you remember that? When they’re in the kitchen, you bring up that photos. It was so ominous. It was so ahead of its time. There is a medium pizza. It’s a little. They.

THEO VON: It’s this big personal pan.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, personal pan. But then they, once they put it in the machine, it comes out as a full pizza. And I thought, that’s 100% in the making right now. There’s no chance that they’re not. Look at that. It starts as that. And that was so long ago. And they put it in something and it expands to what it truly is.

The Future of Food

THEO VON: Now here’s the crazy thing. It’ll all taste like pizza, right? It’ll taste like all the flavors, but none of it will be actual.

ANDREW SANTINO: It won’t be pizza.

THEO VON: No, no.

ANDREW SANTINO: It’ll be some sort of digital makeup of a thing that resembles pizza. There she is putting the little tiny thing from Pizza Hut on the tray in the center. Black and Decker, Shout Out Plug. Good company Plug. Right there.

THEO VON: The hydrator.

ANDREW SANTINO: Hydrating. That’s what it said. Hydrating. That’s why we do it. I would do impressions of all those noise. Look at that. You think that’s not coming. It’s coming.

THEO VON: And that was in 1989. That looks good, brother.

ANDREW SANTINO: That looks delicious. No. And not an ounce of it will be pizza. You’re right. It’ll just be whatever it is. Whatever’s in the ether.

THEO VON: That. What’s that? Meat company. I can’t believe it’s not meat or whatever. Meat.

ANDREW SANTINO: I know. Impossible. Meat beyond meat.

THEO VON: Beyond meat. Yeah. Dude, it’s just the technology is getting crazy. Did you see that thing with AWS and the beds?

ANDREW SANTINO: What do you mean with what they do with beds?

THEO VON: AWS crash causes 2,000 smart beds to overheat and get stuck upright.

The Eight Sleep Mattress Disaster

ANDREW SANTINO: My dad. I can just physically see my dad being like, “The fish. Too f*ing hot. What’s wrong?” My mom yelling at my mom. “You’re sweating. Move over, God damn it.”

THEO VON: Move over.

ANDREW SANTINO: He doesn’t know that it’s the f*ing bed. The AWS overheating.

THEO VON: Move over. He’s got her out in the yard.

ANDREW SANTINO: In the garage, when I sleep. God damn it.

THEO VON: The outage. A major American web service, American Web services outage on October 20th had the unexpected side effect of causing chaos in bedrooms across US as owner of Eight Sleep’s $2,000 plus pod mattress covers found their smart beds had no offline mode and were stuck at high temperatures and odd positions in the night.

ANDREW SANTINO: Just sweating all night. That is awful. $2,000 mattress, too. I mean, good God. You’re a Totino’s. You become a Totino’s. Pizza roll. Hydrating.

Well, this is the problem. Tech is getting too tech. You remember in high school, the one kid that had a waterbed? There was always one kid in high school that had a waterbed. We knew one dude whose mom and dad would let him have a water bed.

THEO VON: Yeah. Or their dad had one.

ANDREW SANTINO: Their dad had one, and they got to use it. I knew a kid who had a waterbed.

THEO VON: Really?

The Rich Kid with All the Toys

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, I knew kid. He was the only child. His parents were old, so he was a late life accident. And he got, bro, he had all the toys. We could do whatever we wanted. His house. His parents didn’t give a s because we were in high school. They were 60. They didn’t give a s. They were f*ing retired. And we were 14 years old. So they weren’t. They were on vacation. They were in Boca. You know what I mean? We were kicking it. We got to do whatever we wanted.

He got, and he had, I remember he had a Cobra Mustang 97, 98, and he had a Ford Lightning SVT. I remember most of us didn’t even have a car. And he had two. His dad taught me stick shift on a 19, I want to say this right, 76 or 67 Stingray. Which one was it? Was it 76 or 67 Corvette Stingray. He taught me stick shifting. That was one right there.

THEO VON: He had all the toys, huh?

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, man, 76. That’s what it was. 76 stingray. That’s, I learned stick shift on that in a church parking lot. This guy’s dad taught me how to do it. And that, dude, I thought, “That’s the coolest people on earth.” He had a water bed.

THEO VON: Oh, bro, give him my email.

ANDREW SANTINO: Half of it. I’ll give him half your email, bro. But I remember he had the waterbed and I thought how that was the flyest on earth. And then one day he was like, “No, man, you get stuck in that thing all the time. You’ll slide into a corner and you’ll be slunched against the sea. You’re waking up a pirate.” He’s like, “It sucks.”

THEO VON: Or somebody puts a little bass in that. You’re sleeping, bro. And there’s a little trout just coming up near your mouth, trying to, just because the salt from your drool is going through.

ANDREW SANTINO: He’s got to fill with koi fish.

THEO VON: Bobby’s s*ting in there the first week he gets it.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah. “Dude, do not sit on the water bed, please. It’ll move, dude.”

The Future of Technology

THEO VON: It’s just the technology is just crazy. We had Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist, on, and he’s a big advocate. He does a lot of fundraising and donates a lot of money to cybersecurity. That’s a big world that he’s involved in. And he says that there could be a hijacking of a product where suddenly all the cars just go and drive off a bridge. There’s nothing you can do.

ANDREW SANTINO: That scares the s* out of me. Yeah.

THEO VON: Or all the Tesla’s just go to a f*ing gay bar, the jets game.

ANDREW SANTINO: Or whatever, which is pretty much the same thing. But.

THEO VON: But just imagine you’re sitting in your car and you’re “What the f*? Everybody’s going to Trenton, New Jersey or something.”

ANDREW SANTINO: Just at the same time, and.

THEO VON: There’s nothing you can do.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, that scares me. When I get in my car sometimes and it tells you it updated. It’s “Updated a map” without you even saying it’s okay. They’re eventually going to update and a total have owner, ownership and control over where you go. Yeah, you won’t even be able to. They’ll tell you where to go. “Time for a check in.” It’ll just take my a to the doctor. “You’re avoiding this. Let’s go.” You know, “I don’t want to go to the dentist.” “We’re going to the dentist.”

THEO VON: Yeah.

ANDREW SANTINO: I think it’s just going to, it’s going to, technology is going to start to own us in a way where we won’t have to make, we won’t even be able to make decisions. And we’ll just, eventually, generationally, people will just be okay with it. Because that’s the way of life, right?

In the same way that, remember going out to dinner when I was a kid? I remember when my parents were, when my mom was dating my stepdad before we, before they got married. They’d go out to dinner, and they would let me come sometimes, and I’d be under the table with tablecloth, and all they would see was a little hand grab a french fry and then go back under. And that was my little adventure time, right? And it was my little play world under there.

And then now kids all have iPads and iPhones. And I’m not criticizing. I’m not a parent, so I don’t know. But it’s so normal that when you see a kid without an iPad or an iPhone, you’re “What is that? What the f* is he doing? Was he thinking and coloring and talking?”

THEO VON: Yeah. Who’s this mutant?

ANDREW SANTINO: Who’s this? Who’s this f*ing mutant?

THEO VON: Something must be wrong with him, right?

ANDREW SANTINO: You’re “What’s going on with that kid?” But it’s become the norm. So I think the future of tech will be, it would be abnormal to make decisions. We’ll be gone, and it’ll become so custom for your life to wake up and, “Good morning, Theo. Today.” And on your bathroom mirror, what you have to do, not what you want. Want, you don’t want. You don’t get to want. You have to do all this s*, right?

THEO VON: These are the things you have to take care of.

ANDREW SANTINO: You must do this. This is your day.

THEO VON: And that will be built in your car. And your car will know your toilet. Your car will be “Your was bad.”

ANDREW SANTINO: More water? Yeah, just make you suck it. “Time to jerk off.” Just in my hand. “No, wait a minute. You must come.” Okay, that’s the commercial. Yeah.

THEO VON: You can’t go to work until you get a colonoscopy. There’ll just be stuff like that.

ANDREW SANTINO: In your car. It’ll just be in your car. “Please bend over.” Yeah, “Performing colonoscopy.”

THEO VON: You’re on the seat. Your seat will be able to tell just through a fart or something. If you, if you’re going to lie to your wife that night, smelling your fart.

ANDREW SANTINO: “What did you eat for lunch?” “I had a salad.” It tells your wife “He had a burger. A double double.” Wrong. You liar.

Life Below Zero

THEO VON: Well, dude, it, I mean, everything’s just getting bizarre, dude.

ANDREW SANTINO: The only way to get away from it. The only way to get away.

THEO VON: I want to hear this. Oh, and Benjamin got away from it.

ANDREW SANTINO: What do you get? What do you mean? Oh, get away from tech.

THEO VON: I mean, he lives out, you know.

ANDREW SANTINO: But he lives on the Internet still, so that’s the irony of that. He does live on the land or whatever. But the only way, real way to get away from it is to, is truly isolate, genuinely and not ingest anything on the, not participate in any of it.

Have you ever seen that woman that lives way out in the arctic tundra and she lives alone and she refuels planes for, but she live.

THEO VON: She’s got a hard.

ANDREW SANTINO: Oh, brother, Brother. And she lives way out in the middle of nowhere, and she’s kind of this. She lives completely isolated. Oh, a life Below Zero. Sorry, that’s what. It’s Sue. Sue from Life Below Zero. Yeah. Way out in Alaska and way northern Alaska. Cavic. And she’s alone, bro. And there is nobody in sight.

THEO VON: Oh, she’s a pretty lady.

ANDREW SANTINO: But this is truly I am. Until the cameras got there, she’s disconnected. She lives off the clothes that either she makes or that are given to her. She lives off her own energy and power. She makes her own food. This would be the only way, truly, you could act. Dig a well.

THEO VON: Disconnect out there huffing gasoline, too. That’s what I mean, right?

ANDREW SANTINO: Once in a while, you need a bump. I mean, you know, the evenings get lonely. You do want to huff a little gas.

THEO VON: I wouldn’t want to do cocaine out there. I hate doing cocaine and being very cold.

ANDREW SANTINO: You want to be hot when you’re.

THEO VON: Being freezing cold and doing cocaine.

ANDREW SANTINO: Well, she’s huffing a little bit of gas just to give her something to think about at night.

THEO VON: Dude, but that would be crazy if they had a, yeah, a, a new Bravo show out there. It’s “Cold.” Oh, it’s cold. But these chicks are still steaming hot.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, but they’re still piping hot. What the, do you want fire?

THEO VON: Polar bears f*ing suck.

ANDREW SANTINO: “You want to refuel, loser.” I like when she talks s* to me, if I’m being honest. Mike Rowe is presenting the whole thing.

THEO VON: Salmon again. No matter how cold the temperature drop.

ANDREW SANTINO: Andy Cohen in Bravo presents Cold bitches.

THEO VON: I’m a bitch. That’s the tagline of the show, dude. Whoever’s the iciest bitch.

ANDREW SANTINO: It’s a competition. Honestly, that’s the only way. And that’s not us. I’m never going to be able to live off the land. I’m not the. You don’t think I’m a dependent, dude. I’m a dependent. Have you ever caught and cleaned something? Have you ever cleaned an animal? Have you ever killed and cleaned an animal?

Living Off the Land

THEO VON: Steve Rinella said he’ll take me and teach me how to do some stuff like that, brother.

ANDREW SANTINO: It is daunting, dude.

THEO VON: My brother put on Facebook if any people have, he just moved into an area in Utah. He put on Facebook if anybody sees any erroneous squirrels in their area or raccoons, call me up. Or doves, and I’ll come over and pop them off. Right?

Dude, he was in a small town. He just got in there because he was just getting into trapping and that. He would set a trafficist at the end of somebody’s ditch or whatever. It was crazy. He was not out in the woods. He was doing this in town, dude.

ANDREW SANTINO: Just in Salt Lake City, dude.

THEO VON: The church called him in, was pretty bad for a bit, but he evened it out. But he learned how to, he’ll make fresh coon over there. If we go over here to eat, he’ll make a, yeah, just a pot of squirrel meat. He’s into it now.

ANDREW SANTINO: You cleaning something? My grandmother used to do that.

THEO VON: Yes.

Life on the Farm

ANDREW SANTINO: In North Carolina, my grandmother, my nanny, they would have chickens, they had all sorts of animals, but she would kill, clean, and cook herself. And doing it or even being around it, I’m not up for it. I think it’s hard to do, man.

Like, I’m thankful for farmers and people that do that for us because, good God, I’ve been around deer getting cut up after I went deer hunting when I was a kid, and I was like, damn, I couldn’t do that. I just don’t know if I could. You would have to at some point for survival, but it takes a lot, and it takes kind of a disconnect.

You get comfortable with death. You get comfortable with the idea that this is like a mutual agreement between you, the land and the animals. And all this stuff, but I don’t think I could ever get to a point when I could disconnect. I like people too much to be isolated. I’m a little social squirrel.

I need to be, you know, when I talk about, I’ve taken big chunks off from drinking and stuff, and we have alcohol at my house, but I don’t know. I couldn’t tell you the last time I drank a beer at my house without friends or family around. My wife and I will never, if we cook dinner, we’re not having a glass of wine like people kind of do with dinner.

THEO VON: Did you do sober October?

ANDREW SANTINO: No. I’ll just take chunks of time. I’ll just pick a, I don’t even, it kind of will hit me, and I’ll go, I’m going to take some time down and I’ll just take a bunch of time down and, you know, just change my perspective on stuff. And then I’ll, you know, go out with a bunch of people and maybe want to have a drink, and then maybe I’ll stop again for another couple weeks or whatever.

But I did find that, even if it’s at my house right there, I’m not interested. I only really enjoy those activities when I’m with other people because I love the social aspect. To me, it’s more, can we go out together? Let’s go get a nice dinner. I went to a nice dinner last night with you, with my business manager. Sweet. And both of them. And it’s just, I like that communal. That’s the Irish in me, for sure. That’s sit around, have a cocktail, tell a story, have a laugh, joke. You know what I mean? Talk shit.

THEO VON: Irish. Yeah, there’s nothing better. I mean, that’s the purity of life, I think.

ANDREW SANTINO: Community.

The Value of Community

THEO VON: Yeah. And just being around your friends, dude, that’s been the toughest thing sometimes for me. About, my friends, most of them are married and stuff. And so sometimes people are, dude, I’ll hang out with kind of younger folks sometimes, but it’s, there’s nobody else, dude. It’s everybody’s married with kids.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah.

THEO VON: And so they have families or whatever. And so it’s, yeah, sometimes you just get, you know, you just find people that are still available kind of, you know, I’m not complaining about it, but it’s just, maybe I am complaining about. But yeah, it’s just definitely different, I think.

But anyway, dude, the greatest thing is just f*ing being around people. I’ll go hang out sometimes around the Vanderbilt football team.

ANDREW SANTINO: Mm.

THEO VON: Dude, because it’s young, dude. They’re fing, everybody’s having a good time, the vibes are up and it’s just fun. It’s, oh, this is fun, dude. I’ll go sit over at the players cafeteria and have lunch over there sometimes with the guys. That’s right, dude. We fing sit there and clown for an hour, bro.

I mean, just everybody clowning and dying, laughing. It’s the greatest thing. There’s nothing better than being around some, it’s even guys that work in blue collar jobs, just that lunch break, we get to sit around and f*ing laugh, talk shit. Even if it’s the same shit you talked yesterday. It’s just those moments, community matters.

Navigating Friendships in Your 40s

ANDREW SANTINO: I think it’s really hard to be alone, by the way. That’s not, you’re not complaining. I have the opposite effect. So since we don’t have kids and we’re in our 40s, most of my friends that are married do have kids, so it’s difficult to hang out with them. I found that more and more is kind of a hiccup of life.

But so a lot of our friends now are in their late 50s because their kids are already grown. So they’re out of high school, they’re off in college or whatever. So they’re kind of, you know, they’re empty nesters again. So then we hang out with them. So I find myself hanging out with older couples now because their kids are already grown versus my closest friends.

Now they all have babies or 4 or 5 year olds and it’s great to see them, but it’s really hard because their balance is so difficult. And I don’t judge it because I get how hard it is. I know that’s hard for them to go, dude, we got one on the way and this one is this.

So a lot of our friends, we took a vacation with another couple and their child has grown. So it’s great. So now we get to just, it’s just couples again. Do you know what I mean? The old days. And you know, it’s, I do have thoughts about it sometimes where I’m, it is very interesting how that is.

My section of friends now is much older than us only because all my friends have that, they’re occupied with soccer and you know, and getting these kids on their schedule. So it’s hard, but it’s hard to see. It’s hard to, I’m trying to, it’s hard that you lose your friends, quote unquote, for a couple of years when they’re going through this growing time with their kids.

That’s been the hardest thing for me growing up is, now being in my 40s, not spending as much time with people that I wanted to spend time with. It’s really hard. Yeah, they’re there, you know.

THEO VON: Yeah, it is a bummer. They’re busy. Do about it.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah.

THEO VON: And they need to be busy. They’re being a parent or they’re taking care of their family, stuff like that. It’s even tough when it’s spending time with your own parents and stuff or step families and stuff, because it’s, you know, it’s a time where your life is kind of, you’re working a lot and not that you can’t make time, but it’s, you know, it’s, I don’t know.

Making Time for Family

ANDREW SANTINO: It is harder to make time. I’m going home. I go home to Chicago now. I’m trying to go home at least every month, at least once a month. That’s really.

THEO VON: That’s great.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, I think I need to make, I just want to make more time. As my parents have gotten older, it’s more important to me than ever. A lot of personal reasons just because of my connection to my family. And, you know, they’re getting a little bit older, so I just, life hits a little bit, and I think that happens in your 40s. You start to see your family, you know, you start to see it.

And so then I’ve started to dedicate it. So if I’m anywhere near the Midwest or I’m going East, I’m almost always going to go home.

THEO VON: You’re popping in.

ANDREW SANTINO: I have to. I feel like it’s not, I have to. I want to. I just mean, I’ve dedicated it to myself to be, go home. Go see mom. Go see dad. Go see, you know, my childhood friends that are living at home and.

THEO VON: Oh, yeah, you’ve always been close to your guys.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah. I got a friend literally landing today who comes in, comes into my house today. I’m excited as shit. I just think, there you try to, you try to really covet these relationships, and it’s really hard because you get busy and no one talks about that. And it really does get hard.

You still love these people as much as you ever did, but life gets, life gets in the way of friendship sometimes because they get busy and their.

THEO VON: Patterns change and their responsibilities. Somebody wants to have a family, and so they get a wife and they start to have a family and stuff. And it’s, there’s not, not room for you in there. But it’s a tough room. You have to, you know, kind of.

ANDREW SANTINO: Get it where you can sneak in where you can.

THEO VON: And that person’s objectives are different at the time, you know? Yeah.

ANDREW SANTINO: And it’s even harder if you don’t like the spouse. Oh, yeah, I’m lucky. I don’t have, I don’t have really any relationships where I don’t get on with my friend’s spouse or partner.

THEO VON: That’s got to be the worst.

ANDREW SANTINO: But my wife. Oh, there’s Cold Bitches. Andy Cohen produced Cold Bitches.

THEO VON: Oh, Laura Loomer’s in it.

ANDREW SANTINO: Is that the girl from the Office? The blonde girls, that. Angela from the Office was on it. And that’s, and who’s the girl on the right? Is that Isla Fisher?

THEO VON: This is a real show.

ANDREW SANTINO: No, dude, that’s his. AI did what we said.

THEO VON: Oh, my God. I’m looking at these six.

ANDREW SANTINO: That’s Anna Kendrick on the far right. Sorry, that’s who that is. And who’s on the far left?

THEO VON: That’s Kira Sultanovich.

ANDREW SANTINO: That is Kira.

THEO VON: She’s not a cold bitch, though.

ANDREW SANTINO: No, she’s not. She’s the shit. I love her, but I could see.

THEO VON: Her casting him in just.

ANDREW SANTINO: Well, none of these women are. We just say who they look like for humor. Yeah, they did who they look. I love Kira, by the way. She’s so f*ing funny, dude.

Appreciating Comedy Talent

THEO VON: One thing I do feel bad about this. When we’re taping the special, it just got was some moments where it was, we got to figure this out. We had, Bonnie McFarlane came, and she was just so f*ing. She’s great. I don’t know if I’d ever met her, actually. I know Rich, but I just had never met Bonnie. We all know Rich, but she had to go back out after she’d already done a set. Dude, she was a savings grace of that.

ANDREW SANTINO: She’s.

THEO VON: I got to text her and thank her.

ANDREW SANTINO: She’s an incredible comedian, and honestly, one of those people where you’re, I, this sounds disrespectful, but I mean, in the nicest way. It’s, I would hope that she was so much more famous because she’s successful, but I feel like the world should know her because she’s so funny.

Some people are so good that you’re, everyone should know you. It’s creepy that people that you’re successful but the world should know how good you are. That happens in comedy a lot where you’re, how does not everyone know who this person is? They’re so f*ing funny. You know what I mean?

THEO VON: Yeah. Oh yeah. It’s, yeah, it’s unbelievable.

ANDREW SANTINO: It’s a pattern of the world of comedy though. It’s very difficult whenever someone’s, why this thing? Not that thing? I can’t tell you. Some things are a shoo in, right? When I first met Shane, that was a shoo in. I knew for a fact Shane was going to be very. What? You know, I mean, no, this is. Look. Oh yeah. This one I just knew. I just knew when I met Shane.

THEO VON: So perfect.

ANDREW SANTINO: I knew when I met Shane you were, well, people are. Everyone’s going to know Shane. Yeah.

THEO VON: Some of his looks just encapsulate. It’s not a generate but it’s just in cap. It’s so encapsulating.

ANDREW SANTINO: A mood.

THEO VON: Yes.

ANDREW SANTINO: A mood that people relate to. Yeah.

THEO VON: Such a specific mood. He’s got a couple of.

ANDREW SANTINO: Dude. Dude. Yeah, he’s one of the best. I mean so entertaining. He’s a once in a generational talent. But some people you know, are going to. But other people, you’re, how come that person is not as. They’re so funny. They’re so, you know, I don’t know, I think it’s unexplainable.

THEO VON: But yeah, I was so grateful that she even came and was on the show that I got to message her.

ANDREW SANTINO: And just show her some love.

THEO VON: Yeah, I just took a break after that. After everything. I was just, this is just too. It just, it just was all a lot. I just needed some time to just kind of decompress at home and just do some things that I like doing.

Finding Balance and Hobbies

ANDREW SANTINO: Are you getting, do you have a hobby that takes you away from all the shit?

THEO VON: Oh, I’ve been going to SEC football almost every weekend in different cities.

ANDREW SANTINO: But do you have a hobby that you can do alone that takes you away from everything?

THEO VON: Yeah, I like to do yoga, I like to work out at home. Just going to recovery meetings, things like that, you know. So those are fun things. I would like to maybe get a new hobby. I think if I get a new house, I could get a dog or something.

ANDREW SANTINO: Like that, that’s a good hobby.

THEO VON: So that would be great to have that great responsibility. I was just thinking about this. Oh, how was the comedy festival you guys went to? Was it good?

The Riyadh Comedy Festival Experience

ANDREW SANTINO: Riyadh? Yeah, wild. Dude, it was crazy. Well, the backlash on the Internet was even more insane. It was insane.

THEO VON: That stuff seemed ridiculous to me though. Well, dude, do you feel like it was.

ANDREW SANTINO: Everyone is a walking contradiction and there’s a million miles of hypocrisy in people’s arguments. And the fact that the community was attacking each other was very strange to me. But you know, like, overall my feeling about it was Jimmy Carr said something that I thought was kind of a powerful statement. He said, I don’t always tend to look at where a country has been, because they’re all flawed, but I’d like to see where they’re going.

And he says, I’d like to think that where they’re going is an attempt at progress and future and growth. And people may disagree with it, but when we went over there looking at the faces of 27, 28 year old kids that my own American ignorance, I was like, well, they’re going to be riding on camels and they’re all wearing cover ups.

They were dressed like street kids. For the most part it’s 27 year old, 28 year old kids who were in jeans and T-shirts and they just wanted to see us. And we met the fans afterwards and it was kind of a beautiful moment. And I haven’t dug in on the whole thing. Well, I haven’t paid a lot of attention to it because there was a lot of noise and hate.

THEO VON: I haven’t delved into it.

ANDREW SANTINO: Well, it’s fine. People can feel how they feel about it. That’s fine that the world will keep spinning. But there’s a lot of hypocrisy out there. There’s a lot of hypocrisy and a lot of people contradict. We’re all walking contradictions, right? So when you start throwing stones, just make sure your plate’s clean.

Because I just feel like something that you’ve said six months ago you may disagree with today. And I think at the core root of it, we forget sometimes that we’re just comedians. And you and I, when we do shows like this is like we want to have fun and make each other laugh and joke around and bring humor to this whole space.

And when the community begins to attack each other, I just think that’s a detriment to comedy as a whole. I don’t take myself that serious. Unless I’m on the golf course and then I’m fing dead serious. No, no, no, no, no. But I just don’t take myself that serious. I’m a fing stupid clown.

I’m an ASU graduate, barely made it out of high school, who went to school for communication because I was confused about what I wanted out of my life and my career. And my whole goal was to make people laugh and feel good. And what comes along with success is responsibility to some degree. But the public’s idea of my responsibility and mine are two different things.

Mine is to spread love and comedy and make people feel good and laugh and entertain people.

THEO VON: Amen.

Doing Good and the Ho Ho Homers Event

ANDREW SANTINO: And also live my life and enjoy it as much as I can before they tell you you’re not funny anymore or to get out of here. So if there’s anything I can do, I’m just segueing naturally. My biggest thing now is like, can I make people feel good and also do good?

And I’m doing this thing on December 6th in LA City Valley College, Southern California Special Olympics. I’m doing a fundraiser. You get to, it’s called Ho Ho Homers. You come, come hit home runs off your favorite celebrities. If you’re in town, I’d love to have you.

THEO VON: I might be in town that week.

ANDREW SANTINO: I’d love it. December 6th is Saturday, LA City Valley College. It’s for Southern California Special Olympics and stuff like that means more to me than all the noise and the bullsh*t of the Internet, of opinions over what a comic should or shouldn’t do or whatever that world is.

And that, to me is the most important thing is like, can I do good, feel good, uplift other people and comedians in the community?

THEO VON: Yeah.

ANDREW SANTINO: And then the rest can f off into space. Because I’m just trying to do my best, man. I mean, fing leave me alone sometimes. My good God.

Performing in the Middle East

THEO VON: Yeah, it’s, well, it’s just, and the media is just so dumb. They all, they care, it’s just about creating controversy. It’s funny. I didn’t think anything of it. I’ve got asked to go to Qatar again in a few weeks, and I think I’m going to go over there.

ANDREW SANTINO: Right.

THEO VON: I had a great time when I was there last time. It was so cool to see a lot of the guys there that it’s a Muslim country. A lot of the guys we’re talking to, at first, you see their outfits, bring up the picture of us. But then you talk to him. The guy’s like, oh, I went to Oregon. I went to University of Oregon. Go, dogs. We think all these people live in sand castles and are like.

ANDREW SANTINO: You know what I’m saying? Yeah, there you are wearing the garb. I also, that was another thing. We asked if that was disrespectful, if we were. And the guys wanted to give us one. They were like, oh, no, it was.

THEO VON: So cool to have.

ANDREW SANTINO: They were very nice. And also, I was writing jokes about it because I was like, I don’t know if I’ll ever joke about it, but I think it was funny when someone’s like, they’re all terrorists, and you’re like, 8 million people in Riyadh or all of them are terrorists. What are you talking about? And they go, well, they did 9/11. And I thought we said we did 9/11. I thought, remember when you guys were all like, we did it. I thought they said we did.

THEO VON: I just think, well, we all know who did it.

Walking Contradictions and Hypocrisy

ANDREW SANTINO: I think there’s a lot of walking contradictions. So it’s hard for me to have, it’s hard for anyone to yell so loud about something to me, because I go, well, nothing is perfect. But if you’re trying, if your intentions are right, if your intentions are good, I do believe there’s hope for growth and people are allowed to be mad about it.

And I just, what I didn’t like, what I don’t like is in the community stabbing and going after other people in the community. Because I just think that’s an odd move. I don’t understand it.

THEO VON: Go.

ANDREW SANTINO: Go off. If that’s how you want to live your life, enjoy the drama. But I’m in a room. I just don’t give a f* about your judgmental opinion because you yourself are not on high. Unless you’re not. Are you tweeting your hate at me from a phone that was mined from lithium by people that were trapped? What are you talking about?

Who made your car? Where’d you get gas? Who made your clothes? Unless you are Sue in Alaska and you live off of yourself in the land, you don’t have a lot of room to talk.

THEO VON: Yeah.

ANDREW SANTINO: You really don’t. I’m sorry. I just think.

THEO VON: And none of us. In a lot of ways, you’re right there’s so much hypocrisy, man. Yeah. It’s like we’re, I think we were committing hypocrisy without even realizing it sometimes.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, we do it. We do. We do. We are walking contradictions. The human condition is to be a walking contradiction, brother. When I was a kid, I remember feeling like in no world do I feel like I want to get married.

THEO VON: I don’t really.

ANDREW SANTINO: I was like, I don’t want to get married or have a family. I pined for that. Now as an adult, I’m, you know, I wanted to have a family. We couldn’t have a family. And that changed my perspective and that. I remember being in college, being like, I don’t think I’m ever doing that sh*t.

THEO VON: Yeah, that’s foolish.

ANDREW SANTINO: That’s not for me. I want to be a comic. That’s all I need is this and this and this. And your views change, your goals change.

THEO VON: Yeah.

ANDREW SANTINO: Your affiliations change, your friendships change. You keep changing. You know when they wrote in your yearbook, never change. That was the worst advice anybody could ever fing give you. You should change. You should change a lot. And you should keep growing and changing. I mean, f, man.

THEO VON: Yeah. If you’re still sitting there playing pencil break and fing eating your buddy’s boogers so you can have money to buy candy at lunch. Dude, you’re a sick fing.

ANDREW SANTINO: Please change. You can’t play paper football forever. It is fun. But, my God, I was nasty at that sh*t, dude.

THEO VON: That sh*t was. But this was the rule, dude.

ANDREW SANTINO: Right? This.

THEO VON: So meanwhile, you’re supposed to be learning in the years later. You’re like, why am I dumb? Oh, but, dude, you’re right, dude. Yeah. The infighting amongst comedians, I didn’t understand. People sent me. There was a clip from Mark Maron where he said something about me in his comedy special.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

THEO VON: And it was like, Theo would interview Hitler, right? And I’m like, well, it’s kind of crazy that you say that. Well, he’s dead, first of all.

ANDREW SANTINO: You can’t.

THEO VON: Well, also, the Nelk boys just interviewed.

ANDREW SANTINO: Him.

THEO VON: So what are we even talking about?

Comedy Community Dynamics

ANDREW SANTINO: What are we talking about? Right. Well, I think that the other side of the Maron coin, which, Mark loves to start sh*t that’s his.

THEO VON: He loves this right here. We probably, I shouldn’t even say.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, we don’t have to. But I mean, he loves to start sht. That’s a part of his, that’s his discourse is talking sht. And a piece of me knows when we talk sht about people we love, we joke around about each other. There’s love behind it. And I don’t know what the, if there’s love behind with you and him, I don’t know your relationship. The Internet seems to know. They think they know fing everyone’s relationship, which is even more mind boggling.

But I do think, yeah, it’s always been fine. I always think if it’s, if you joke about somebody, if it’s funny and it’s in jest, it’s obvious and if it’s not, it tends to be a little bit more obvious. And so I don’t understand that kind of approach. I don’t get it.

But I also know we can all touch a lot of bases, right? In the sense of I’ve known Mark for a long time, he fing annoys the sht out of me. I also, it’s like in the comedy buddy space, I have a lot of guys that I, you get on with sometimes, then you fall out and then you get on and then you get pissed off at. And then they do these things. But we’re all in this co-work, co-worker space.

I do think you shouldn’t, I do think there’s no necessary need to go after other people. I don’t get it. But a lot of times it’s not my war to fight or our wars to fight, so I let people go do it. That people shoot at us and I’m like, whatever, man. I’m just going to still make dumb f*ing comedy for my fans until I’m dead or until they tell me to go away.

I’m just going to have tried. I’m trying to have the most fun I can with my stupid little dumpling in our little studio until they tell us to go away.

THEO VON: Yeah.

The Comedy Special Controversy

ANDREW SANTINO: And I don’t give a f about the drama. I mean the drama is such like, grow up. Give me a fing break.

Yeah, but you’re right, you didn’t deserve. You don’t deserve to be attacked on a special. That’s very strange. I think even Mark would admit someone I’ve known for a long time, not been close to, but we’ve known him from because of the store. Someone who I think he himself would admit, I would hope that wasn’t the best move to put you in a special. I mean, why? Why?

You know what I mean? Sometimes I write jokes about my dad and I’m like, why did I put that in a special? You know what I mean? A friend or a colleague for that matter because you’re probably not friends. But I don’t, I just don’t know. I don’t know if it’s necessary.

THEO VON: Maybe he just meant it as something funny, you know.

ANDREW SANTINO: Well, look, yeah, the core of it was probably him trying to write a joke about it. But I don’t think you’re close enough for that to be, for that to have that kind of, you know.

THEO VON: Or maybe to say, hey, what do you think about this?

ANDREW SANTINO: That would have been great if you say to somebody, hey, man, are you cool with me doing this joke? Yeah. Or I’m just letting you know I’m doing this joke.

Cultural Perspectives and Government Complicity

THEO VON: But the media also likes to make. It’s like, yeah, what our country is complicit in so much. Like, you know, it’s like one thing that I thought was like, go into a Muslim country. Like, they have their rules, they have their way of life. It’s not my way of life.

ANDREW SANTINO: Right.

THEO VON: It’s their rules. I don’t know what it’s like to grow up there and to live there. I don’t know what pros and cons are of having such staunch beliefs or sticking to such doctrines and stuff like that. I don’t know, I can go and look and see.

But for me to say that your country needs to be just like our country, which has been complicit in a lot of fed up stuff, the most fed up shit. Not the people, but the government. Right, right. Who the f am I to go say, you know, I’m saying, like, it’s really hard for me. Like, you guys need to be more like us when it’s like, we’ll look at all the fing bullshit that we’re being shoehorned into. Right? That’s a perfect statement that we’re being shoehorned.

ANDREW SANTINO: Well, and. Well, here’s the argument, right?

THEO VON: And also, we don’t know what the f* we’re talking about. So if you disagree with us, that’s fine.

ANDREW SANTINO: That’s fine too. I don’t care. Well, that’s what people say. They go, well, you didn’t get paid by the people, got paid by the government. I said, well, yeah, people bring promoters and companies bring people in all the time. That’s kind of how the Globe works as far as entertainment goes. People can’t produce a show. Someone has to do it.

And I think the idea was, let’s bring western entertainment here, not in an effort to avoid some of the bad shit that’s happened, but more to try to change culture, to grow. I’m hoping that’s my. That was my hope for it. And people are like, just say it was about money. It’s like, yeah, dude, we perform for money. And to bring comedy to people, these two things can coexist.

The idea that someone’s like, just say it’s all about money. No, dude, it’s also about the idea that this is an enticing new world. It’s like, shit, dude, I’ve never performed overseas. I’ve literally never performed anywhere else. I’ve done. We did London and Dublin. I’ve never done any other country outside of North America. Yeah, and that was kind of f*ing wild, for sure.

THEO VON: Especially all you guys and girls. All these comedians going over there one time.

ANDREW SANTINO: Wild, man.

THEO VON: It must have felt otherworldly. It did.

ANDREW SANTINO: It. I mean, it literally was. It felt like a. It felt like I was put. It felt like it was in a movie. I was like, this feels so out of my own element. And you get any of that Lebanese food? You better believe it. No way.

THEO VON: You get any of that Saudi Arabian cocaine of it?

ANDREW SANTINO: No, man.

THEO VON: Or a little bit of that nose sand.

ANDREW SANTINO: No, I got a wicked eye infection instead. I got fing sand in my eyeball. And then. F it. No, but you know what? I think at the end of the day, you need a colonoscopy.

THEO VON: You’re like, this thing’s fing in my car. And just because you got sand in your eye, like, this thing’s fed, dude. My butt’s dilated now because this f*ing. The bad. The fuse is broken or whatever. It’s just like, dude, all you did was brush your teeth. And it’s like, you’re a homosexual or whatever. You’re like, what the. We’re taking you to church. You have the Baptist set up. We’re taking you to church.

ANDREW SANTINO: It tells my whole family. It sends them all text messages, Andrew’s gay. Andrew’s gay. Andrew’s gay. What? Oh, my. Yeah, no, my Jeep did that.

THEO VON: Yeah. Just took a thick shit earlier this morning. That thing’s f*ing overreacting.

ANDREW SANTINO: Shut it down, dude.

Government Shutdown and Privatization

THEO VON: Is the government still shut down?

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah. Is that still shut down? Because I have to fly in a day or two and I’m a little worried about it.

THEO VON: Pull it up on Perplexity. Is the government still shut down?

ANDREW SANTINO: Dude, that’s how dumb I am. I don’t even understand what that meant when they said the government shut down. Yeah, I was like, all of it? What do you mean. What does that even mean? They’re just not. They’re not gathering.

THEO VON: The shutdown began on October 1st due to Congress’s failure to approve a new budget, and now has lasted 22 days. Dude, I’ll tell you this. Everything’s privatized now. Anyway. Dude, have you been to the post office? Dude, I went to the post office the other day. Okay. Dude, I went in there. There was. I’m not even joking. This is true. There’s two birds fighting over a fing box, and there was a black woman that worked in there just trying to spray them with Lysol to get them out of the facility, dude. And I was like, what the f?

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, I know that post office. I’ve been there.

THEO VON: What the f* is happening?

ANDREW SANTINO: Well, they have. Carrier pigeons are back. Do they got to keep under control a little bit. Any government building you enter, you’re like, this is. This will be a f*ing nightmare.

THEO VON: It’s all been privatized, dude. It’s over.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, it’s done. It’s done.

THEO VON: You have to realize it’s a shell. The government, it’s just a shell for private companies now. That’s all it is. I mean, look at. They’re holding the UFC at the White House, right? Which is going to be unreal in that.

ANDREW SANTINO: New office that he built, the new. The new ballroom. The new UFC at the White House is insane.

UFC at the White House

THEO VON: But think about that. We’re going to be on the lawn of the White House. It’s crazy. It’s become a performance, man.

ANDREW SANTINO: And Dana White’s going to be inside gambling inside the White House. They’ll just. They’ll set up a f*ing table for. Dude, I’ve seen those videos. This guy betting millions and millions of dollars. I know he’s got it like that, but, my God, the anxiety of just watching him bet 3 million bucks makes my insides drop out.

THEO VON: Oh, look how this.

ANDREW SANTINO: UFC 250 on the lawn.

THEO VON: This is going to be so crazy. I better be really nice to Joe Rogan this year.

ANDREW SANTINO: You want to. That’s how. That’s. You’re going to get a ticket. Your front row, baby. Your front row. That’s insane.

THEO VON: To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the United States, the UFC plans to hold a historic mixed martial arts event on the south lawn of the White House.

ANDREW SANTINO: I’m not kidding when I say this. I thought you were f*ing around. I thought that was. It was an AI generation. I thought that was just a joke. But that is actually the plans to do it. What is that? It’s going to be on his. Trump’s birthday. Oh, it’s going to be on his birthday. I thought it was on the 4th of July. They changed it. They couldn’t get that date. Oh, it said that up there? Yeah. Okay. They couldn’t get four of. They were booked out for the Fourth of July. The White House was booked. They’re booked out.

THEO VON: Imagine if they don’t unbooked the White House. But that’s, you know, I’m saying that’s where we’re at. Everything. It’s all become. We’ve all. Everything has become, you know, the post office is. Because everybody uses Amazon or FedEx Now. That’s what I’m saying. It’s like the government. You take your shit to the post office, good luck. They don’t know where it is.

ANDREW SANTINO: You don’t know where it is.

THEO VON: It’s basically a halfway house for mail.

ANDREW SANTINO: It’s a recovery for mail. Yeah, yeah.

THEO VON: It’s a f*ing.

ANDREW SANTINO: That mail’s on his 12th step. It’s doing really good.

THEO VON: Nick, what do you think about that when you hear about UFC at the White House? Nick’s a big UFC guy.

ANDREW SANTINO: He’s big, huh? Yeah, It’s crazy. It’s like we’re living in a simulation. And the fact that they just use perplexity to generate their AI images of the White House is crazy, too. It’s like they don’t use an artist, but it’s going to be wild and you’re going to go, nick, wait.

THEO VON: Who uses that? Perplexity does that?

ANDREW SANTINO: They. They’re the ones that generated that image. It set up for TBS. It was TBS, Twitter, right? Yeah. Those really look like AI generated images of their mock ups of what it’s going to look like.

THEO VON: Wow. I mean, that’s going to be on, but it’s going to. But it’s just like, you know what I’m saying? That’s where we’re at.

ANDREW SANTINO: I know.

The Commercialization of Everything

THEO VON: It’s like everything that was governmental that meant a lot of the things, I think that had felt like a lot of purpose and texture and heightened. Like something that was almost above us and untouchable is now very accessible. And maybe I’m looking at it too negatively that it’s all just been commercialized.

ANDREW SANTINO: You’ve said it since 2018. Everything’s WWE now. And UFC and WWE are the same company. It’s going to be at the White House because UFC owns WWE. Is that right? Yeah, they merged into TKO. It’s a good name.

THEO VON: With William Morris, it’s all a conglomerate.

ANDREW SANTINO: William Morris, the agency. Yeah.

THEO VON: This is the thing that’s going to start to happen, is they’re going to start to create things, and I believe this already happens. They create things in stories, in the news to create a story, and then they make movies and stuff about it. Like, it’s all right.

ANDREW SANTINO: Oh, my. It’s all. It’s all feeding the next story machine.

THEO VON: Yeah.

ANDREW SANTINO: Well, I mean, you know, for Dana, it’s so exciting. I mean, it’s. What? That’s wild that it’s gotten to the place now where it’s this globalized. I mean, it’s got to be one of the fastest, if not the fastest growing sport. I mean.

Dana White and UFC’s Pandemic Success

THEO VON: Well, because he was fearless. I mean, he was. He said, we’re going to keep this going on. During the pandemic, they picked up so many. How big did their fan base grow during the pandemic? Can you look that up?

ANDREW SANTINO: Well, because everybody else, right, the only one that operated, but the NBA was in a bubble. They were the only ones that operated, right? I mean, yeah, I think they’re the only ones that did that the bubble thing or whatever.

THEO VON: And they were all getting sh.

ANDREW SANTINO: Well, they were. They’re all getting. F going. Leaving and getting fed up and coming back. How much? UFC? Yeah. Oh, my God. 40% in 2021 alone.

THEO VON: Jesus. According during the COVID pandemic, with overall pay per view sales and sponsorships hitting record highs, they were the only show in town. Dana White’s f*ing. You got to respect him, man.

The Evolution of UFC and American Fighting Culture

ANDREW SANTINO: I mean, he’s a brilliant businessman. He invested in early on. And Rogan was also there at the beginning. I remember watching that interview on ESPN, right? We watched it literally the other day in the car when he got in an argument with that boxing promoter about the boxing being like, this will never be a beloved American sport.

And Rogan kept using facts to destroy this guy’s argument, and it was so true. I mean, even I remember the old cage days of Tank Abbott. Right? Is that his name?

THEO VON: Right.

ANDREW SANTINO: And the San Diego and the Orange County guys.

THEO VON: And I remember Ortiz, and I remember.

ANDREW SANTINO: Thinking, man, this is like this wild sport. I didn’t even know then. I didn’t really think. I was like, will this become a major thing? Will this be ESPN broadcast or pay per view broadcast? Will this get to that level? I didn’t think then it would. You know, I didn’t doubt it, but I never was like, I didn’t know if that was possible.

You were like, that’s, it seems like a niche thing, but it’s not true. American culture loves, we love one on one. Yeah, that one, that guy we love. We love this idea.

THEO VON: Sort of like human c* fighting, in my view.

ANDREW SANTINO: Or pit bull fighting. Guys are elbowing each other to the heads, guys are kneeing each other.

THEO VON: Get at the leg locks.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah. Rolling around on the ground, submission holes.

THEO VON: Joe, you can’t respond to that. How is that human c* fighting? You know what that is? That’s actual fighting. You know what boxing is?

ANDREW SANTINO: What?

THEO VON: Boxing is a very limited form of fighting. It’s kind of a silly agreement. Say we hate each other, we’re going to fight, we’re going to duke it out man to man, but we’re only going to use our hands. That’s it.

What ultimate fighting is, it’s the actual sport of fighting. It encompasses all aspects of fighting, ground game, kicking, punching, elbows, submissions, all the above. That’s why it’s much more exciting. That’s why it’s a much more dynamic sport. What boxing is, is one aspect of mixed martial arts.

ANDREW SANTINO: True, it’s one aspect. I mean, it’s just one little aspect of the total package of what fighting in its, I imagine, in its original form, human to human combat, had to been all systems go. It was everything. It was wrestling, it was fighting.

I mean, can you imagine the first fighting that homo sapiens were doing? There wasn’t rules. They were f*ing, they were probably using rocks. I mean, they were probably using a referee.

THEO VON: There wasn’t a referee.

ANDREW SANTINO: There was one local guy. There was one frail ginger man. He was breaking up. Guys, guys, please be nice. One pale ginger was the ref.

Yeah, I mean, it’s just impressive. It’s impressive that it’s grown to the scale that it’s become. When Joe has taken me and I sit and watch, I’m mesmerized. I mean, I can’t lie and say that I’m a huge follower of it because I don’t know enough. But I do love watching it because I think it’s incredible.

Athletes doing just remarkable sh. It’s amazing. It’s incredible that they get to this place of this kind of training and technical abilities. It’s wild to fing watch live. And when you listen to heavyweights hit each other in UFC, you’re like, my God, dude, the sound. I mean, you could feel it in your bones. It’s nuts. Sometimes it’s hard to swallow. You’re like, good God, that’s fing.

Early UFC Memories and Mainstream Evolution

THEO VON: I know. And they want to do it. That’s the craziest thing, man. I remember in high school when you would hear about these kids watching UFC and it was kids who were smoking dope and one guy’s sister was a call girl or whatever. I mean you just hear some crazy sh and you’d be like, dude, we can never go around those guys.

They’re getting a pay per view of this sh where it’s a 400 pound guy beats up a little fing Chinese guy or whatever. Or a strong baby from Vietnam or something. They would have these crazy fing fights. They have a blind black guy or whatever who’s just super violent and they got him fighting.

So it’s just, it was crazy, but now it’s just become so mainstream. But they were alive during COVID man.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, that fight. That’s just, that’s a guy that works at AutoZone.

THEO VON: Yeah, fighting with a guy that works at auto sandwich. Dude, that guy.

ANDREW SANTINO: This was the first ever UFC fight. And the guy on the right was in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. He just passed away a couple years ago. Rest in peace, Taylor Wily.

THEO VON: Horrible.

ANDREW SANTINO: No, great, thanks, Nick. Now you make us feel bad the guy’s dead. You bring up a picture of a guy who’s f*ing dead.

THEO VON: I didn’t know, Nick. I thought that was AI.

ANDREW SANTINO: Son of a b.

THEO VON: Adam, those are real guys. What’s his name? Where was he from?

ANDREW SANTINO: Taylor Wily. Hawaii.

THEO VON: Nice. Oh, I got my Hawaii shirt on today. This surfing shirt.

ANDREW SANTINO: Can you surf?

THEO VON: Kinai ahai hui hai nalu.

The Beauty of Hawaii

ANDREW SANTINO: You know what Hawaii means? It’s ha vai E and ha is wind. I think look this up because I’m going to f* it up.

THEO VON: Okay. Hawaii.

ANDREW SANTINO: AVA. E1 is water. It’s broken up. Ha is breath, life force. Vai is water. And E is representing supreme or divine. It’s kind of beautiful.

THEO VON: Oh, it’s the best.

ANDREW SANTINO: Hawaii is f*ing the best.

THEO VON: They crushed it. Dude.

ANDREW SANTINO: I love going out there, man. Oh, yeah, it’s just, it’s so funny too because living on the west coast, it’s either go to New York or Hawaii, same flight time. I think I’m going to go to the islands. F*, whenever I’m like, it’s the same flight time to go to New York. I was like, I’d rather go west, go out to the island, just disappear out there.

I honestly get it when people go and retire out there and you meet some guy at a local bar or something, he’s like, I moved from the state. I moved from Arkansas 28 years ago. I’m never f*ing going back. You know? I get it, dude. It’s heaven on earth out there. Okay?

THEO VON: We moved here. My wife’s a lesbian now, but we’re still together.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, she does the coconuts.

THEO VON: Yeah, she does her thing, I do mine.

ANDREW SANTINO: I’m playing in a band, and it’s going really well. Everybody knows me, you know, everybody knows me in this little town.

THEO VON: Place is fing great. And you’ll see somebody at night, they’ll be driving a car. The headlights don’t work, but they’re shining a flashlight out of the fing window. It’s just so bootleg, but I love that, dude. It’s just, it’s their own place and they, yeah, there’s nothing.

ANDREW SANTINO: It’s a phenomenal spot.

American Culture and Hypocrisy

THEO VON: Yeah. All the American things have gotten crazy. It’s just, everything’s kind of changed, you know? It’s like Mount Rushmore. They’re going to put a nose ring in one of the guys. F*ing, it’s just gotten crazy.

ANDREW SANTINO: Washington’s got blue hair now. I think Washington’s wearing a choker.

THEO VON: Franklin’s got a f*ing nose ring.

ANDREW SANTINO: Tongue pierced. They’re building a tongue with a piercing on it. And then underneath says, this sh is fire.

THEO VON: Even those guys, man, they wanted, during the American Revolution before, they wanted to, they were a big part of the expansion to take over Indians land. There’s always just been hypocrisy in this country.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah.

THEO VON: We live.

ANDREW SANTINO: We live in a hypocritical world, and we can’t be critical of everyone else. We can try our best to do our best, but the idea that we’re impervious to criticism is bullsh. We are all walking contradictions.

THEO VON: Yeah.

Freedom, Progress, and Unity

ANDREW SANTINO: You know, and the better we are at admitting the fact that we don’t believe everything that we used to believe, and that’s a healthy perspective, the better we’ll get along with changing and growing. I’m a progressive person. Right. In the idea that I want people to live their ultimate freedoms.

So in that, I’m very, in a socially liberal world, I want you to be as free as you want to be. I don’t give a sh what you identify as, who you want to be, gay, straight, whatever you are. I want people to feel free to be their own human. And I think the more that that love resonates with people, the more comfortable we are with getting over the fact that your business is your business.

I don’t have time to fight with people about how they operate and live their lives. You’re not harming other fing people. I couldn’t give a sh about you and your freedoms. That’s the best part of the country. You should feel free as f here. And other countries should follow suit.

The problem is we should stop infighting. If we show the most love for our progressive culture, that we just let people live the way they need to live, the world, I think, will take a note, a little bit better. You know, I love that America gets a lot of criticism, but I do think we are making waves and changes. We just don’t ever get credit for it at all because we’re continually fixing.

A lot of places aren’t updating, they’re not doing the updates. We’re trying. We are all trying in different ways. Some updates people don’t like, and it moves fast. And then sometimes people think, oh, well, we’re regressing. But I think if your heart is in the right place to let people live their ultimate freedoms of life, whatever that may be, I think culture will continue to grow and change.

It doesn’t happen overnight. The world will not change overnight, and neither will the f*ing United States. We’re all doing our best to get there the best we can. You may not agree with all of it. I don’t agree with a lot of my peers. You know, there’s friends I have that we don’t share the same opinions about stuff. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to be friends. And that doesn’t mean we can’t still get on.

You know, to say that we’re all going to view things and feel the same and think the same, that’s f*ing insane. That’s not a logical way to live.

THEO VON: It’s impossible.

ANDREW SANTINO: Well, it’s also.

THEO VON: It’s just impossible. It’s like if you think one race should run everything or one group, it’s just, that’s never going to be the way it is, right?

ANDREW SANTINO: No, it shouldn’t be. We people should, you know, my grandfather used to always say that old man thing of you know, he doesn’t talk religion and politics. He never did. You know, and he was friends with many people that had different politics and religion than he did. Didn’t mean he couldn’t get on with him.

Yeah. Right now, there’s a divisive movement of hate, separate. And I think that’s fing sad sh. I think educating, talking, empathy. I think all these things help people grow. And less infighting, less drama, less bullsh, less hate, less vitriol, because it comes from an awful place that’s spiraling into, we’re spiraling into a negative, negative fing world, man. Bad. It’s weird. It’s bad.

I think the only way out is to do good as much as you can in your life, in your community, with your loved ones, your family and your friends, and push more positive sh out to people. I mean, it sounds corny, but I mean it. Stop the bullsh, dude. All this f*ing, then the Internet is fueling negativity.

THEO VON: And it’s when we click on it, it’s when we watch on it, you know, it’s like, yeah, Poirier says that all the time. He’s like, man, I don’t watch it. If it’s something, if it’s going to be gossipy, if it’s going to be that kind of stuff, don’t bring it into me. I just don’t want that in my world.

ANDREW SANTINO: Doesn’t need it.

Finding Peace in an Overwhelming World

THEO VON: Yeah. And our worlds get affected pretty easily. You don’t think about it. It’s just like a pool of water. And it’s like, you put this bullsht in, then you just fing sitting there swimming in bullsh*t, you know?

Yeah. And I’m not. Yeah. And nobody’s perfect. I’m not saying that I’m great at it or anything or even that I do it well, but to be conscious of it, that the people that are creating things for you to see, they may not have your best interests at hand. You know, I think the days of that being. Or even pure truth, dude.

One of the worst things was after the comedy special, and people were making articles and stuff. People would find old videos of me talking about stuff on this podcast and put it out like it was new, of course. And so then there was, like, emotional stuff. Like, we’ve talked about a ton of stuff on this over the years. Like, I mean, I kind of, like, I’m kind of a late bloomer, and I, like, kind of came in understanding some of my own life and thoughts and feelings a lot on this during podcasting and f*ing.

People, like, even, like, positive groups were, like, putting sht. I was like, why would you fing put this. I’m getting. Thousand people have sent me this thing, and you’re, like, acting like it’s brand new today. This is from five years ago, right?

ANDREW SANTINO: Date it. They should date it.

THEO VON: I don’t know. It’s all like. And there was a ton of nice stuff. I mean, it was all nice. All comes from a good place. But it’s just. It’s all kind of fascinating, you know?

We’re All Just Kids in Adult Bodies

ANDREW SANTINO: You know what I learned? I think I’ve learned in the more recent years? And I mean, this is all of us. All of us are little tiny kids in a big adult shell pretending that we know what we’re doing.

Oh, I don’t care how intelligent you are, how adjusted you are, how well to do you are. Rich, poor, no matter where you come from, we’re all little kids in this big shell pretending that we know what we’re doing. It’s like a little tiny guy driving the machine.

And we all think that we know what we’re doing, but we’re not. We’re all insecure, broken little children who are just trying to pretend to be adults and figure our sh*t out. We’re all figuring it out. It’s all a lie. It’s all a lie. No one is more mature than one. No one has a better idea of how the world’s going to work. Your opinions are as base as the next person. You’re just a little kid inside of a human shell.

And so I think remembering that gives me some solace, that I’m like, this guy isn’t better than me, isn’t smarter than me, and whatever. We’re just little kids in a big body. That’s all. We are trying to. Trying to do good if you can, and that’s it. And have empathy for the idea that you don’t really know somebody. You don’t really know them until you know them.

THEO VON: Yeah.

ANDREW SANTINO: Shooting at them is not going to do any good. You know, Stop taking shots of people. It’s just weird. I don’t get it.

THEO VON: I mean. Yeah. I don’t know. I think recently I’ve just been thinking of all the grace that God has had in my life. When you think about that, dude, it’s like all the times that something could have been bad or that he was, like, supportive or all those things, you know?

But yeah, man, you’re right. We’re all just. Everybody’s just hopefully trying their best. Yeah. You know, continue and learning as we go.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah.

THEO VON: And we don’t know what the f* we’re talking about. Also, people so.

ANDREW SANTINO: Well, we know what we’re talking about. I don’t know if it’s right for anybody else, but I know how I feel. I know where my heart’s at, I know where my soul’s at. Imperfect people trying to just figure it out. That’s. That’s it, you know.

Accepting Life’s Path

THEO VON: Are you guys done trying to have a child, do you think?

ANDREW SANTINO: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think also our age now, like we’re at an age now in our 40s where I think it’s like, you know, we’ve accepted it, so to speak. I mean, I know that’s not the. It’s not the right word, but we’re okay. I’m okay with where we are now and we’ll see what the future holds in terms of like what is our next adventure in life, you know, where do we move, where do we go, who do we support?

You know, I have a 54 year old Asian boy that I take care of every day of the week. A little Korean boy. He’s kind of my child. I feel like I’ve adopted a lot of children that I work with in a sense that your producers and we have young producers, editors, and I’ve kind of take them under my wing.

I think my children have started to become my community. You know, if I can help out new comics or if I can give advice or if I can lend a hand or do these charity events or something. I think that’s become a little bit of my child, you know. To me, if I can do that, that’s become my focus and it may change. Yeah. But I think for now that’s where I’m at, you know.

THEO VON: Yeah. I start thinking about that kind of stuff, like if I don’t have kids and it’s okay, you know, it’s like I’ll find like other ways to be of service or you get little pieces of family from other people. Or maybe I’ll just, you know, spend that time more just with my own family that we didn’t get when we were young.

And that’s kind of like the part that I get out of life that my spirit gets this time, you know, and maybe there’s something else next time, you know, maybe it just gets to kind of remake old thing, you know, redo things that weren’t close.

ANDREW SANTINO: Sure.

THEO VON: Or have a new experience with some of those things. And that’s the parts of love that I get out of this time. And that’s okay.

ANDREW SANTINO: That’s good.

THEO VON: Yeah.

The Arcade Game Philosophy

ANDREW SANTINO: You know, I look at it as you’ve ever seen that. Because you’ve never seen that game that. It’s in an arcade. You put in quarters or change and they pile up and there’s a thing that slides back and forth. You’ve seen that thing, right?

THEO VON: I love that.

ANDREW SANTINO: Right. And the idea is, like, you keep putting in money into that thing, you may never and probably never are going to get the full flush of the coins. Someone else will, though. So it’s kind of like a sociological experiment in a way, too. Right. Your greed could supersede. Right.

But there is something interesting about this that, like, if you looked at it in a beautiful way, you’re kind of loading up coins for someone else to have fortune. It may not be for you, you know, so it’s kind of. That’s kind of the story of life. I mean, seriously, it’s a little cheesy, but it’s almost like you’re just loading up coins and doing. Right. It doesn’t mean it’s going to pay off for you, but it may pay off socially for the future for somebody else.

And isn’t that kind of dope? Like, that’s why I think doing. Doing something for other people, whether it’s charity groups or lending a hand or whatever, that’s kind of my idea. I probably won’t be there to see the reward, most likely, but that doesn’t matter. It’s kind of dope that I know that someone’s going to feel that. Because you felt success and reward, right?

THEO VON: Mm.

ANDREW SANTINO: And so when something has blessed you with success and reward, isn’t it cool to know someone else is going to get it whether or not you get to enjoy it? That’s not the point. The point is the knowledge that it will and may happen or may happen. Oh, yeah.

THEO VON: I mean, there’s people that helped me along the way, and I wouldn’t have had the. I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to be in a place for success reward. I mean, we’re all just kind of like a composite of the people that have supported us.

ANDREW SANTINO: Totally.

THEO VON: Or the composite of the love that’s been shown us, you know, and even our outcomes are. Thanks, bro.

ANDREW SANTINO: Thank you, dude. This was fantastic.

Wrapping Up

THEO VON: I got to come, Ginger. I got to come. Bad guys.

ANDREW SANTINO: You got to come.

THEO VON: You got friends.

ANDREW SANTINO: You got to come see us. You got to come see us.

THEO VON: I got to come back.

ANDREW SANTINO: We’d love to have you back, you know that. I love. I love to see you around. I know you’re out and about and you’re moving a lot, but Take time for you do whatever you got to do to center yourself and enjoy. Enjoy, you know, some rest time and get away from all the bullsh*t for a little while. Yeah, you need it.

THEO VON: Yeah, I do need it. I do need to make sure that I keep that a focal point. And, yeah, I appreciate you asking about it, man, and I appreciate you checking in and. Yep. Bad Lies, Whiskey, Ginger, and Bad Friends.

ANDREW SANTINO: I got them all. No. Bad Lies, Whiskey, Ginger, Bad Friends. Go watch them all on YouTube and podcasts and all that. Come on, Come see me live. Go to andrewsantino.com and come see the boy. You know, doing some new dates.

THEO VON: Yep. We got tours coming up. And also, you got White Noise. That’s on Hulu.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yes. Go watch that on Hulu or internationally, if you don’t live in the United States. You can go watch it on. I think it’s on Disney Plus, they’re all under the same. The mouse. The Mouse house umbrella.

THEO VON: Were they good to work with Hulu?

The Animated Show Project

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, I mean, you know, they let me kind of. They let me kind of figure it out. We were kind of working it out as we went along. You know, this is their first foray into specials with Burr and Sebastian and Gaffigan. And, you know, they had a great lineup, too.

THEO VON: Bobby, too, right?

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, Bobby’s doesn’t come out till next year. He doesn’t film until January. January or something like that.

THEO VON: That’s cool. You guys are both doing it on there.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, I’m proud of the kid. We’re trying to do a show with Hulu. Hopefully they’ll want to. You know, we sold them an animated show, and we’re waiting for the. Yes. It’s amazing. It’s. It’s like stories from our high school.

And we are the. Everyone that’s a young person is a bug, and all the adults are humans, and Bobby’s a roly poly, and I’m a lightning bug. And it’s kind of great, man. It’s this beautiful dumb friendship show about stories from our high school about how we, you know, you felt like you were in, but you were out sometimes.

THEO VON: And, yeah, Bobby was using.

ANDREW SANTINO: Yeah, he was big into it. I mean, he couldn’t get away from it, but he was still like this brilliant little artist who couldn’t get out of his own way. And so we used all these stories and put that stuff in there. It’s kind of. It’s kind of fun.

So hopefully we’ll do that. Hopefully that’ll come up and that’ll come to fruition. But otherwise, just come see me live and watch Bad Friends and no Bad Lies and Whiskey Ginger. And that’s that. Yeah.

THEO VON: There he is.

ANDREW SANTINO: Look at us. Who is that? Yeah.

THEO VON: Oh, a little bok choy termite.

ANDREW SANTINO: Who is that? Say, that’s. That’s not us, but that’s not our picture. I don’t know why they. I don’t know what that photo is, but, yeah, we did. Right. We did an animated pilot that. Hopefully it’s in the works of Hulu. Hopefully, everyone will get to see it.

That’s my boy Nick Kreiss on the right, who helped write it and put it together with us. And. And that’s Bobby on the left, looking like Bobby does. Oh, yeah.

THEO VON: He’s kind of like the handicapped. Michael Landon, Andrew Santino.

ANDREW SANTINO: Thanks so much, brother. Thank you, bro.

THEO VON: Oh. But when I reach that ground?

ANDREW SANTINO: I’ll share this peace of mind I found I can feel it in my bones but it’s going to take.

Related Posts

• On Purpose Podcast: with James Cameron on the Power of Dreams (Transcript)
• On Purpose Podcast: Selena Gomez on Letting Go, Healing, and Finding Her True Self (Transcript)
• The Diary Of A CEO: Simon Cowell on Failure and Resilience (Transcript)
• Actor Chris Hemsworth on Jay Shetty Podcast (Transcript)
• Actor Ethan Hawke on Joe Rogan Podcast #2425 (Transcript)