The Trans Debate, Surviving PTSD, and the State of American Humor | Yannis Pappas

Intro

just gonna recommend to any young comics it's you know it's it's not politically correct to say but it's a good idea when you start doing comedy just find someone who has a job who you can live off [Music] welcome to the michaela peterson podcast this is episode 119. clearly my studio still isn't set up although this is an ipad and looks pretty good long story short i'm allergic to tennessee nashville was amazing i just moved to franklin but i forgot i'm basically a bubble person and there's greenery everywhere and so i'm allergic to everything i may be moving to a desert maybe i'll live in a yurt probably be allergic to the dust anyway i don't know if you can tell my face is puffy i have other allergy symptoms but i can't do it can't do tennessee too many allergies one day i'll have a studio again sometime soon in some city somewhere in this episode i spoke with janice pappas a comedian from new york city janice is an american stand-up comedian actor and podcast host from brooklyn new york he co-hosted an award-winning series in the sports comedy show in addition to participating in festivals around the world and live shows i liked him a lot this was a good episode we spoke about a number of topics including him getting shot recovering getting through ptsd we spoke about the transgender mixed martial arts fighter who pretty brutally won an mma fight fighting under the name lady farrell with a t-shirt on that said end transgenocide while beating up a woman anyway the conversation gets weird it was fun please hit subscribe and hit like if you like it or don't either way i hope you enjoy the episode [Music] papas welcome to my podcast welcome michaela peterson to me being a guest on your podcast it's good to be here i'm excited great well thank you so much for coming on i'm excited to talk to you yeah i've seen your specials i'm a fan thank you so this should be fun i'm a fan of you i've been watching uh the clips from your podcast you've had some friends of mine on and uh i'm happy to be here this is amazing and here means you know in my house we're doing this virtually but you know what i embrace the future i'm not embracing the future but i'm making do with what we have for the moment are you in new york i'm in new york and we're both two coveted survivors so it's good to speak to another coveted survivor i saw you call covenant in russia i caught it on the flagrant two podcast and so we have something in common not only were north american but we also are coveted survivors which is good i've had covid i've had kovad twice i know i saw that kovan really likes you well you it does really like me canadians are just more welcoming generally so maybe that's had something to do with that i think it's it it was me pretending kovit doesn't exist really that made it happen so many times are you listening to the joe rogan podcast i do i do indeed okay before we get started for anybody who isn't familiar with your work can you give a brief background about who you are and what it is you do i'm a trans man um who is living my dream as me no uh i'm a greek american kid from brooklyn new york uh i'm a stand-up comic i got a podcast called long days with giannis pappas formally i had a podcast called history hyenas christos stefano was a lot of fun and uh i'm just uh i'm just a wild kid who's uh who's currently on 10 milligrams of um of uh i don't even remember what it is because they call me johnny biden so i remember i'm on 10 milligrams or something lexa pearl lexapro that's what it is oh man i took lexapro it did not agree with me no no not at all made me really volatile and i do not need to be more volatile really are you volatile very very yeah i did my dad's personality test i scored 98 on volatility wow at least you didn't at least you didn't do the robert hair test and come up psychopath that's the worst one right as far as personality traits i would say psychopaths probably not great yeah well it's not great for other people but for the psychopath it's that's true you live unencumbered by uh guilt and i just that's true freedom now if you think about who the freest people on the planet are it's probably psychopaths because they don't they don't have any feelings so they're totally free of any commitments or emotions that's a free life that is a free life yeah that is a free life i've actually considered that before not having the guilt or that that voice in your head that tells you when things are you're doing things wrong yeah that actually doesn't sound half bad for you can i ask you a question if like they figure out a way to do brain surgery and take out that emotion which they'll probably be able to do at some point would you have it removed would you become a psychopath i'm curious you know what i because of the amount of guilt that i'm experiencing now no i wouldn't be able to go through with it right so my current personality would stop that from happening i would just be too curious i'd have to do it i'd have to do it and then i just couldn't wait to look at myself in the mirror to just see the depth in my eyes and i would just look at myself and go cool and then i'd go out the world and destroy have some fun i think they have the real fun i think they probably do well no no i would say maybe not maybe maybe you don't get the positives associated with it maybe that's why you have to do more extreme behaviors in order to experience joy properly yeah but i mean what's more lit that or just like sitting around thinking of weighing consequences i think skydiving sounds a lot more lit i mean we can ask you pops he probably knows because he's probably sat down with a few but they just have a lit time i mean yeah occasionally they'll bite off the titty but you know that's not all of them that's just like a few of them who go awry you know just don't get in the face yeah if somebody asks you to get in the backseat of a beagle and they're pretending to have a an arm injury just don't get in ladies you may lose a titty wise words wise it's all you really i mean that's all you really need to know to have a safe life stay away from someone who's injured asking you to get to help them put something in their car oh man i'd fall for that you fell through the 10 bundy one two oh instantly yeah like oh no an injury i've been there i can help but what would it be because of his looks or would it be because you just felt bad oh well looks would definitely come into play yeah he was a pretty handsome devil to be honest with you for sure i might have helped him out too be honest yeah there you go yeah are you able to do shows in new york right now i am i am able to do shows i'm a little concerned i have a newborn uh 11 months old so i'm a little concerned um not really in new york but like i cancelled my texas in florida dates because i'm a cock and uh i care about my daughter god damn so uh yeah i'm just you know until there's like more data about like how it affects kids and stuff like that but it's looking pretty good i i read some study it was a small study of like only a few kids but they were like in the icu with covet and no long-term effects a year later so that's good so i'll probably go down to uh to florida in texas or as they like to call it the real america and do shows soon but i did postpone those shows but i am now getting back out on the road and new york is like yeah the new york's wide open you can do shows now they you have to show your passport though there's somebody at the door who was let me see your papers says here going to switzerland i don't think so mr greenberg and dr george [Laughter] that so they're actually doing that in new york yeah they're about to do that in ontario i think at the end of september yeah yeah i mean you know i talked to i i talked to like doctors like this one doctor i talked to who's like a g he's brilliant he's a surgeon and he's the republican which is uh why i trust him in this you know because like if anyone's gonna be conspiratorial it's usually that side with this and he's like yeah man you know it's a dangerous bug and you know he's like for the the mandates because people aren't getting the vaccine because he's like that's the only thing that's going to end this pandemic so it's like but then i listen to people who turn covet into content and they're saying something different so i don't know who to trust people not on the internet or people on the internet nobody absolutely nobody yeah i didn't i didn't trust anyone but i've had covered twice and the second time was pretty rough my best friend it's kovitz all over toronto right now my best friend's kid uh he's six months old he just caught it so both his parents were vaccinated but he's little so he wasn't vaccinated and dad this is just this is interesting it's just anecdotal but the dad was vaccinated with pfizer and he got quite ill mom with moderna no symptoms and then little levi got sick but he was sick for like two days with a tiny bit of a fever and they gave him tylenol and he's better now and now he's probably immune for a while so yeah that's my anecdotal study on on vaccines well i guess the the main thing is that they're all okay no big deal for anyone yeah that's the point yeah yeah that's they're all fine i was just in austin checking it out as i was considering moving i don't want to be in canada anymore i'm tired of canada do you have your cell yeah do you have your uh what is it i know you guys got to pay like 10 grand to get your uh the 01 001 it's in the works yeah so yeah it's coming good um but i can be there for six months hanging out before that comes in so that that'll come in but i was looking at austin because i have a whole bunch of friends moving to austin and i was there last month and i really didn't like it yeah i don't like it either i was considering a move for a second you know because after i did rogan i was and new york was shut right yeah i was like ah maybe i'll move down he's like i'm open to the club man and uh it's gonna be great it's gonna be a comedy mecca and uh then i spent some time there and uh you know i got you know homeless people throwing bricks at me and uh i was like well i'm kidding but i mean there's the homeless are like it's like a zombie apocalypse down there in downtown and i was like i don't know if i could do this man i'm from new york this is i'm used to a really nice city we're just i was new yorkers are arrogant we're arrogant we are for good reason though or or is that just because everyone else there is good reason i think i mean let's be honest you like every but you're from new york so you would say you'd say that i'm biased yeah but i mean like there's a reason why everyone wants to come here at least pre-covet i mean you know it's every other city kind of looks like new york new york uh the casino in vegas to us we go there and we're like wow look at you these are your skylines and we like pat them on the head they're like there's something new nice little job kansas city it's just it's new york is a universe crammed into one and then you go to another city and you do the downtown like in a day and you're like that's it and uh yeah so it's tough but if you like barbecue food and only barbecue food austin's your spot now i'm gonna go to nashville nashville's a good one i've made my decision yeah yeah nashville's a good one that's a beautiful town i know i love it i'm currently wearing cowboy boots do you like do you like country music my wife loved like she's just like a big fan of country music uh i like old country i don't know about the new i don't know right maybe one day i will when i'm there and it's everywhere constantly right right yeah yeah well you got one of the biggest country singers ever right shania twain shania this is true yeah you guys can really you blend it in with us you know you guys are like you really sneaky canadians are sneaky you'll meet one and i'll be like hey you're american and then as soon as that's why i force everyone i suspect is canadian and i always say i suspect someone's canadian because you guys have like a molested blow like a nice thing you got like that i'm in a cult look in your eyes and so if i see that in the eyes i suspect is this person canadian and you can't tell until you hit an a or an about so i usually try to frame them a question where i know an about's going to come in and then i'm like gotcha gotcha you canuck ah i don't think i sound canadian you don't that's why you're about yeah yeah you guys blend right in like cia agents which is convenient for your spies for justin trudeau yeah no hell no hell no okay i want some background information on you like let's do it when did you get started how soon did you make comedy a full-time thing i had like a very uh very jagged journey it didn't it wasn't a straight line like anything in my life so two steps forward ten steps back you know i started like in 2000 doing stand-up then 2001 in may and i was off to like an auspicious start like i started hitting the road i was doing colleges i was having fun uh the the the gl ones just came out so me and my buddy started filming and we were doing that before anybody on the internet and then i got shot in um 2001 in a robbery uh attempted robbery at a nightclub that i was working at you know i was just trying to make cash doing comedy and then uh were you doing security no i was working um yeah i mean if i did security i mean rob that club i was working like uh you know he created like some bullshit jobs for me because he's a friend of mine he was the promoter and his parties were like really like you know it was all like drug dealers and you know people would i did the cash register so people would come in i just remember dudes just pulling out wads of money and you know it was that type of party um the place i got shot at actually uh another fame infamous thing happened where there was this famous director he might have been canadian i don't remember if i'm thinking right but he was walking home one night in soho and outside of this club i used to work at and this can be googled and people can read about it's a crazy story somebody shot somebody in their car and then the guy tried to drive away while he was shot and he died behind the wheel and this director like whose career was just taking off was just walking home and the guy who's dead in his car got shot hit him and killed him randomly and that was that was the club i was working at so that i got shot you know it was kind of a milieu of that spot it was a dangerous spot yeah so jeez that was that how long did it yeah how long did it take you to recover from that it was quick i mean i got so what happened was um you know some some guy like tried to rob us and i got shot point blank range like in the car and um yeah and it was like in my upper inner thigh and uh i could i stayed overnight in the hospital but it missed all the there's like a main artery there it didn't hit i was lucky and um you know i had a very beautiful doctor digging in my asshole to find if it was compromised in any way that was embarrassing like when i got to the emergency room you know she just like to check if how to make it worse yeah it's just the whole like on top of it yeah and you know what i learned though i really and i don't know if i've ever talked about this i learned how women must feel and i mean this i learned how women must feel when like they're assaulted or something like that because cops are they're very insensitive like when they come to get the story like when a crime happens i remember like because i was shot the cops just assumed because usually people who get shot are involved in some service shady stuff so they were just like making up stuff trying to catch me in a lie they were like he said because they caught the guy they were like he said this was part of he was the kid was like i don't know armenia in a row so he was like uh this was some sort of greek armenian beef or something i was like no he was like he said he said if you would have said if if if i would have said what he said you would have done the same thing so like what'd you say to him i was like i don't know who the kid is this is you know and they just didn't believe me and they were making jokes with the with the bedpan they were like look captain he's got look at if he can put it on his head he's got a nice hat and i'm sitting there just like shot and um so when they try to get the story it's like they're they're very insensitive so i could just imagine being a woman going in there telling their story and they're like yeah but like you know did you know the guy what were you wearing you know did it i could just kind of picture that that insensitivity maybe now things have changed because of charlie's angels and and um and the me too movement i call it charlie's angels where they're just fucking girls activate and get everybody i feel like things have probably changed that sounds miserable it was especially wow yeah because i feel like how long yeah sorry no no you go ahead i was just saying my feelings were yeah i was like in a vulnerable position and like you know you're just sitting there and how old were you i was 23 oh yeah yeah that's that's pretty young for that to happen yeah and so i was just like one like the cops were like being skeptical of my story and i was like dude you know you know but i get it can i just heal and go home can i just yeah really can you just hand me a lollipop and make me feel better call my mommy and tell her to come yeah jeez so how long did it take did i mean how much of a hiatus did you take after that so it was interesting so i just kind of like they let me go the next day and then like i couldn't really sit on a toilet or anything for a while because it was so sore they left the bullet in because it was too deep in so they were just like we're just going to leave it in and then eventually your body will push it out like you know i guess your body seriously yeah yeah what i didn't know that that was a thing that they actually did yeah that seems like the wrong thing to do yeah it does seem like the wrong thing to do like hey get this out of me but apparently your body will slowly reject a foreign object and push it out like your body knows and that's kind of what happened like it would it slowly made its way to the surface where you could like feel it and then i got it removed like two two years later um so i i yeah i was home and and then uh and then i i had an snl audition i just started comedy and i got an i had an snl audition like that week so i did it i did it like four days after getting shot and it was we like i didn't know the psychological effects of this thing like ptsd i mean my yeah so i went on stage and like i bombed i like completely bombed and like i was like i was like kind of having these physical reactions like you know shaking and hyperventilating and i didn't know what they were i wasn't connecting the two and that went on for like a like a like a a while like a year um and i didn't know i couldn't connect the two uh that i had ptsd because then i started like i get on the train and i just start hyperventilating and having a panic attack i get off and i go what is going on like i didn't know yeah and i guess i went from this state of like this benign denial of never thinking something like that could happen to like my brain going to the opposite extreme going like wow this could happen at any time and i was just my subconscious was like freaking out so i went to therapy and i i got over it but you know anxiety's been a part of my life ever since thanks for opening that door whoever the kid was who shot me yeah that's terrible yeah wow so i quit comedy for a little while yeah okay well that's not that surprising uh the first time so i was quite sick when i was young and i when i got better i started having this had never happened to me but i started having panic attacks when i went into hospitals and just from the association of that and surgery and so the first time i went into a hospital and it there wasn't like a really a mental component exactly but i went to a hospital and i was like i had that like physical thing happening i was like what is happening oh that's like panic just from like my body doing that it was very strange did you have like an advantage because of your dad that he'd let you know early what it was or so i told him i was like i can't go into hospitals i don't know what to do like if i go into a hospital or even anything i was pregnant at the time when that really started happening so even going to the midwife just because it was peripherally associated with the hospital i'd get this panicky feeling again and i was like dad what do i do do i need to do like exposure therapy and like walk around hospitals for a while and like go in them slowly and and he was like no given what happened to you that's totally a reasonable response i was like okay well i guess i'll just figure this out on my own thanks dad it's amazing how weird how sensitive we are like as humans we're just like these emotional like like a psychopaths don't feel anxiety at all they don't fear feel fear that's why it's so free to be one but it's just amazing like nothing's happening we're not nothing we're not in danger at all and we freak out like we do because we get these big brains and we're pussies [Laughter] yeah yeah well also some of these things you can kind of logic out you're like well i shouldn't have had that kind of response but something like having surgery or what happened to you it's pretty reasonable for your body to be like nope make sure that never happens again that seems like a pretty reasonable response yeah to me yeah i mean you would figure your mind would just be like you're okay though your mind would but i guess that's how strong the subconscious is because i didn't know what it was until a therapist started pointing out i remember like the city you know because the city pays for your you know uh the vic there's some victim fund where like you're victim of a crime you go to the hospital it's paid for by the city and then they offer you like counseling and uh and i was like why do i need to kill yeah i was like i'm fine i feel fine and then a year later i mean i was dealing with these panic attacks for like a full year and uh yeah whenever i'd go on stage i started freaking out i'd be sweating and hyperventilating and so i just kind of quit and then i did something a little more relaxing which was social work with 9 11 victims and then i started having more panic attack and i took on their anxiety it's brutal brutal time it was a dark time ah yeah that doesn't sound here just relax don't go on stage in front of a bunch of people deal with trauma victims yeah you needed to be like in a cottage somewhere at a beach breathing for a while resetting your nervous system yeah yeah i started i did social work then for about five years and yeah that uh they just threw me in there at the beginning and i remember like one of my first clients was uh a waiter or no he was a pastry chef at windows on the world and they like oh he lost all his friends he was off duty that day and the first day i pulled we were like talking he was like cause i was a caseworker he just started crying to me in the in the room we were in and it was my first like day and i was like wow like i was so detached like it forced me to grow up faster than than um i should have probably and i think it was just too much and so it was just overwhelming emotionally and i just went into a dark place and i think it's called counter transference or something where like you take on the anxiety of your clients like you you know if you're in social work or you do any type of health care i don't i can't remember the term for it but i remember i would have anxiety going to sleep because i was like helping people get mortgage rental assistance um victims compensation fund um we had something so i worked with people who lost their husbands lost their jobs lost their livelihood lost their whatever family members the breadwinners and then there was something called the unmet needs table where you would present the client's case to all these charities like a group of charities and then based on what you were asking for they decide what to give and i remember going to sleep worried about like i gotta get this person's rent paid or mortgage paid so i kind of took on their anxiety it was a dark time that is an insane job yeah it was wild that sounds like you might be so that personality test i was i'm obsessed with this personality test this understand myself that my dad's made i've been using it since before it was on the internet giving it to like potential boyfriends judging them harshly i'm dead serious about that too but it sounds like you probably scored high on compassion you can say counter whatever but people who don't score as high usually are a little bit more detached so you might have felt detached but like if you were taking on people's if you cared that much you might have scored higher on compassion yeah even though you're a comedian yeah yeah because i've been in comedy a long time i'll tell you there's two types of personalities i've noticed in comedy either extreme empaths like very sensitive or like yeah or like dictator level sociopaths nothing in between yeah that that seems accurate yeah that's what i've noticed if you think about it it's a job that's very similar to a dictator you stand in front of the crowd you you woo them you get them to follow you uh you know you lie make up stories and uh charisma lots of charisma you know we have a lot in common with with uh asocial types so huh yeah maybe it's a different way of reading the crowd like maybe people who are less agreeable or less compassionate do something more charismatic and do a different type of read than people who are empathetic or empaths and then maybe they can feel the crowd more not sure how that would work yeah that's a good question i wonder that's why i'd love to get into the mind as someone who who's look seeking to control more than to connect because they both work they both work very well you know interesting yeah i've met somebody okay so sorry no no you've met some no i was just gonna say i met some comics who uh you meet them off stage and then you see them on stage and you're like oh that's not you at all and it's like it's all a method it's all thought out and pretty meditated it's marketing you know it's a it's what madison avenue has been doing for us you know smoker you know oh like pure like acting right you were like yes sociopathy yeah like kind of like there's that's not the person at all you know look at bill cosby i mean for example you know i mean evil people always pretend to be the opposite of what they are nobody comes into a room and announces i'm hey i'm gonna you know it's like if you hide behind i'm clean i'm wholesome look what the catholic church does you know it's like call me father uh you know make sure you confess to me so i have things to blackmail you with if you try to you know if you find out what i've been doing i mean you know it's uh we we're holy we're good and it's like they've just been mass raping kids it's like it's uh evil people it's always the wolf in sheep's clothing that's how evil operates they never walk in and announce their evil or else they'd be caught yeah true that's not good marketing no stop i'm the evil sociopath trust me yeah that's not gonna happen yeah that's what makes them so fun yeah that's true that's true so you did get back into comedy so how did that start um it started slow like i started uh i was doing social work uh at that point i had like done i was working for an ad hoc agency for 911 relief called uh ldrny and that was over two and a half two and a half years i did that so around 2005 i was getting unemployment and that ran out and then i started working with mentally ill informally homeless people in an sro which is a new york thing and then i slowly started doing a show once a week with uh donnell rawlings who was really the guy who got me back in his stand up and i always give him credit for that and he was if you don't know who he is he was like ashley larry on the chappelle show and now he tours with chappelle all the time and um that was right when chappelle show was coming on the air and then it hit big and so he took me on the road with him and burr and charlie murphy and i would like to sell his posters and do five minutes and um and so that he got me back into he kind of pulled me into it tell me i was funny and he gave me the opportunity to perform in one of his like rooms that he had in manhattan once a week so i started doing comedy once a week again and then slowly i met more people started doing more shows and i got back into it that way so that was about 2006 and um so that's when i really started again and started like for for real you know started going after and then i went full time in 2008 i quit and i just lived off my girlfriend at the time so okay so since 2008 so that's quite a while yeah i recommend okay so how do you sorry i was just gonna recommend to any young comics it's you know it's it's not politically correct to say but it's a good idea when you start doing comedy just find someone who has a job who you can live off of i'm gonna clip that yeah uh when you do sets do you come up with a whole like storyline of kind of what you're going to say and you have jokes that are in your head or are you is it really on the fly i'm always curious how comics can go on stage and tell you know story after little story after story after story after story and remember what to say next i think uh there's two types of comics i mean there's variation between those two types but it's really the comics who write their jokes beforehand like um they write them down and then like go perform them and then there's comics who write while they're on stage who take a premise and that's what i am i'm a comic who writes on stage so i take a premise something that in my head i think is funny or something i say to someone who i think is funny uh and then i just take it on stage and play with it and then little by little you craft it that way like a sculptor you just kind of change a word here and your goal is just really democracy it's like the you want you can't get everybody but you're looking for the most to appeal to the most people to get the biggest laughs in that area so you craft it around that that's what you have and you can really only do that on stage so i think even the people who write beforehand once they test it they'll go back and rewrite it and tweak and that's what comics do you just tweak it to make it the most appealing to the most amount of people well it's no wonder you have some anxiety that sounds anxiety provoking it is very anxiety it's you know it's the biggest fear people have for a reason you know it's public speaking especially if you think about we're expected i think somebody some egghead timed it out like about every eight seconds you're expected a laugh in order to do good so uh yeah speaking publicly is nerve-racking enough but when you're expected to get a laugh like every eight seconds at minimum it uh yeah it takes a while we all are like turtles i mean comics of like and that's what you build up over years is just a thick skin so uh you know whenever i read my youtube comments and someone says like my eyes are too close together like i just love it i love you know i love being made fun of i mean you could say anything to me i mean i've we publicly are rejected it's the only art form where you practice in public and the audience tells you in real time you get rejected in real time you can hear it and you can see it in their face you know other artists go in their room and they practice practice practice and then they present uh you know somewhat of a finished product we are always on display that's a very good point that's a very good point i didn't think i like i figured i mean if you're singing or something it's a song that you've recorded in studio and then you've practiced it so many times that almost everything is perfect and so that's completely different than on the fly trying to make people laugh oh yeah yeah so i'm that ladder type of comic where i just i wing it a lot i wing it a lot um and things will come to me in the moment necessity's the mother of invention so it's a real tightrope walk i guess i prefer that and uh you go out there you try something and um you know it works or it doesn't and um then you craft it based on that the next show and the next show and the next show and now with podcasting i feel like i feel like comedy's changing too and you're going to see certain comics like who can do a podcast like you see you know tim do you know i i have a similar style to tim where it's like we just rant for like an hour and uh you you sometimes you watch a tim dillon episode you'll be like that was as good as any crafted special i've seen so it's like because of the internet and because of how fast things moves now now and how many things have already been done maybe that's changing maybe like stand-up will become more like riffing in the moment uh current events things like that because i mean we're kind of like running out of shit you know it's like everything's been done oh but the world is changing so quickly there's so much new content that's true but if but it what's relevant today you'd be surprised it used to be you can have an hour for like two two years and then and then record it and it would still feel kind of relevant now things move so fast that you're kind of like you hot you have a bit and you're like or you go and you look at twitter and you're like there's 20 people doing tweets about that premise and you know it's like so it is a little bit more of a challenge in that way you know what i mean because you're like the world moves so fast and there's so many people tweeting and so many people consider themselves funny and yeah there's more than just stand-ups now so we used to have a monopoly on funny that we don't have anymore that is very true that's very true even with podcasting if you want to hop on something you have to find like for me if i'm trying to comment on something i have to find someone record it i have eric his team editing it and then release it right away and learn about it yeah you're right that is tricky and things do age quickly it's like some some controversy like two months ago it's like oh no people already freaked out and rioted and protested and now they're over and on to the next thing and that's that's done now yeah that's why i sometimes suspect that we may be coming to the end because you know you know when you drop an apple from uh from wherever you know up high the farther it falls the quicker it falls and so i feel like we're about to hit that ground because things are moving real quick they've sped up so i hope it's not over i got a kid but it's a little yeah it's a little scary you know there's this push to get off the planet it's like you know these elites you're like what do they know what do they know like you know they're just like they're trying to skip town i'm trying to skip town i don't know anything i'm just like i'm not comfortable in toronto maybe nashville's nashville will be nice and comfortable for a while before that angst gets there yeah i mean don't you feel like the news is a little apocalyptic now it's like reading the bible every morning it's like fire here flood here riots here you're like what's going on man it's weird and i almost feel like these elites like bezos and they're like they're like on the lifeboats of the titanic they've like taken the few of the lifeboats and they're just like rowing away you know like we saw this coming a long time ago we have life boats for myself all our friends some yachts see you guys yeah i see that i see that for sure we'll see maybe things will improve maybe things will things are either going to like i don't think they're going to stay like this they're either going to improve like the economy is going to open up like we'll either get used to covet or or it'll get less bad or things are going to get way worse i don't see like uh i don't see us hovering around this weird level we're at now for very long people are too angsty i've thought that for a while you know especially with like how zany the left has got and in some ways how zany the right is god i'm like this can't last forever maybe this is just no people uh you know i think it's people struggling to adapt to something as powerful as the internet we've never had anything like this where information there's so much information coming at you this fast such a pure democratic medium where everyone has a voice and it's people are just adapting to the power of it but every time i'm like ah it's coming to an end i read the news and it's like yeah you know trans woman who was a man a year ago just choked out a woman in mma i'm like this is getting wild this is getting wild i saw that that's wild that's wild yeah it is wild you know and you know it's funny nobody ever really talks about the point like it's like how come you never hear any controversy about trans men trying to compete with men if there's no advantage to being a biological man why aren't there all these trans men protesting to get into men's sports because guess what men would welcome it if there is a trans man if elliott paige can cover odell beckham jr in the open field god bless him you know some little five six trans men who was born a biological woman who's just you know they always got that voice like hey i'm a trans man how are you doing my name is buck if those men can compete with male pro athletes god bless them but obviously the point is they can't they can't because when you're a man you just you have an advantage physically that a trans man could never catch up to at the pro level yeah i know i don't know like i see news articles like that where it's like yeah like that that that woman mma fighter she got like fairly hurt and it was like duh like if we can't recognize that that's gonna happen as a society not very smart yeah um it's a yeah i mean i get it people want to be compassionate they want to understand but like but it's not compassionate to let somebody get beaten no it's not and especially when that i think he picked the you know she i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm on notice i put myself on notice i'm sorry i misgendered her she was like he a year ago i took up mma a year ago from what i read and then competed like in a pro mma fight against women you're like what are we doing and they test i guess they test the levels i mean i'm no scientist but it's like yeah but it's not all about i mean that's silly too it feels like there's no scientist behind that because you can't just test a level of a hormone be like okay it's even now like yeah what about all the muscle growth and the bone structure and the shoulder width and like what about everything else that has to do with it instead of this one like marker that can be like kind of artificially suppressed right yeah you're right it's like they cherry pick the one thing and if you see a before picture of that girl that trans woman who just choked out that woman in an mma fight in portland of course um or oregon um he was buff i mean he was like a big dude so it's funny like the before and after picture he was a big guy and then yes so it's uh it's a wild time it's a wild time we're kind of living in an impressionist painting where all lines have been diluted all form is gone anything goes and uh anyone could be whatever they want it's uh you know i guess america really is the land of opportunity you can you know only in this country can you be born a woman and grow up only in this country could you be born a man and then grow up to be a female champion you can be anything you want in america oh brutal i was uh my dad was pretty unhappy with that he tweeted something out about it and was like yeah yeah people should be unhappy i don't think things are gonna change until like there's something that really really unpleasant that happens to like somebody in high school and then their parents go okay yeah something needs to change you know unfortunately i gotta say this is a women's issue you know it's like i know women this is like women's like we don't men you know i gotta i got enough to worry about i got i gotta get calling i gotta get colon checked i you know this is for women because like i said this isn't that we we don't have that that we don't have that problem where like there's trans men trying to compete with men and if they did we would welcome it because that would be amazing if they could do it yeah so it's like yeah women got to uh it just shows you how divided women are yeah strange too because i feel like and well i feel like that that that whole issue was kind of brought forward by women as well so like i i think more than i mean it was brought forward by a lot of people but i feel like the forefront of bringing it forward kind of like women wanting this and now i don't know we'll see what happens i'm gonna watch from the sidelines comment now and then hopefully nobody gets really hurt it's a it just shows you how things are finite the more extreme you go in one direction you come out the other side the universe is finite yeah there's a finite amount of notes there's a finite amount of ideas because feminism now if you go all the way to the extreme of feminism you're basically advocating for a man to go into a female space after he transitions so you're going like you've come back to the other side like miss pac-man [Laughter] huh yeah that's why extremists have so much in common that they don't acknowledge that they just go full circle yeah in kind of every aspect whatever the extreme is yeah that's super weird that that happens that's very true yeah you have to be careful you have to be careful if you're if you're really i've found that because i've had i mean i feel like everybody has this problem when they're too attached to one idea it's like as soon as you're super super attached you're like oh yeah i'm 100 certain about this one idea then you have to kind of check yourself and say well maybe there's something i'm missing because i probably shouldn't be 100 certain about anything that's a great point yeah that's a great point that because then you get blind you become arrogant and uh you become blind that's what happens to powerful people that's what that's why uh scientists the scientific method is the best way because it's always about amending and [Music] changing and uh so yeah i mean the secret you know socrates nailed that it's like you know always question you know always i'm dumb you know because you are i mean look how big and vast the universe are we're dumb yes you're that okay who are your favorite comics these days um well he's a good friend of mine um but tim dillon i think is doing uh something nobody's doing with podcasts for sure he's uh off the fly he's just he's he's funny and he's just so naturally talented and smart he's fun um uh you know bill burr who's one of my favorites as a stand-up um and in anything um patrice o'neill was one of my favorites the late great patrice o'neill was was great but there's so many that are good now uh you know nate parket's a great clean comic and just so funny and there's guys like dan soder paul verzi there's so many funny guys now but my favorites of all time george carlin was the guy i saw yeah yeah i saw his special you're all diseased in 1999 it was after his wife died so he was like you could tell he was like he put everything i don't know what he considered his magnum opus but i consider that to be his best special he was he was surly but not to the point where it wasn't funny anymore like towards the end he got like like bill hicks towards the end you're going like is this comedy or you just you know are you just angry but it had that perfect balance of like bitterness and humor and it was just he was just so brilliant george carlin and prolific so uh there's a lot jackie gleason there's a little people a lot a lot of people don't know about him because he was he was a long time ago but he was just gifted and a lot of people don't know he was a stand-up and he would go on you know go into rooms with no material and just rip the room and shreds and the place would be shaking just because he had so much talent you know he used to go into uh the honeymooners um which was a failure at the time which is hilarious it bombed and then it became a hit afterwards but um he would go in and he would read the script once and this was back this before digital right so it's like you would film was expensive they shot on film so like you had to nail the lines he would read the script once no rehearsal and go and then you you can watch the episodes and see what he did he would memorize it i mean a guy was just he was brilliant wow yeah he would before he would drink like a hundred vodkas he would eat like a million steaks he was a very big personality and uh you know even bob he was nicknamed the great one because he was just the talent was just overwhelming of jackie gleason so okay i have to check him out i haven't seen him yeah he's dead but i saw yeah yeah uh i saw i saw bill burr live uh once i think it was in budapest and i almost died he's like i almost died i couldn't breathe he's so ridiculous he he could be the best i mean also chappelle and then a one that one that's often overlooked and i'm not gonna say for bad reason because i've seen him so many times live and it's really uh it's really uh it's a crap shoot whether you get a good show or a drunk one but doug stanhope live when he's on when everything clicks because you know he's a bit of a drinker um but when he is on his brain he's just incredible so he's uh he's definitely up there for me too doug stanhope okay i'm gonna remember that list and i have some catching up to do i think if you want to watch doug's dan hope it was his showtime special called no refunds it's one of the best specials you'll ever see and then patrice o'neil uh elephant in the room which was the one he did like right before he died there is good that's as good as comedy can get right there okay okay that sounds good so normally like with when covid isn't a thing what what do your days look like like how often do you perform how often do you go to do comedy shows even now let's say now because this is the new how we live now so let's say now the um the pandemic changed things for me um because before it was like we'd be out every night doing sets set after set after set and then the pandemic hit and we all kind of focus on the internet or at least the ones who were smart or you know were were willing to adapt and um now i'm more concerned about my podcast than i am about sets it's like i'll go do an hour like i'll go on the road and because special doesn't mean what it used to mean you know it used to be like you did your sets to get a late night set on a late night television show or to do a half hour on comedy central or an hour somewhere but now like we were talking about before it's so saturated there's so many comics so many specials so much content nobody's watching television anymore people only watch joke by joke really that um when i go perform live i just i'm i just have more fun i riff a lot and i don't think about my hour and crafting as much as i used to and i focus more on my podcast and i put effort into that researching and thinking about what the joke's going to be on there because you just you reach more people and then you know you build a fan base and then you go perform for your fan base i mean the entertainment industry has exploded into a million pieces and nobody's really famous anywhere you're just kind of famous to the people who know you we're all like touring bands that have fans and um i love it it's better that way there are no more matt damon's yeah that's very strange and i guess that's just because anybody can try right anyone you don't have to get a spot on a set or get a position as an actor you can start creating content and then see if people like it yeah the gatekeepers have been usurped they've been uh rendered unimportant by the internet it used to be all you wanted to do is get passed at a club so then you could work at that club you can work on your act so you can get on late night to get that exposure or get a special and now you just you know i could i put a video up the other day of hitler preparing you know for his speech in the mirror and you know 70 000 people saw it or whatever it's like i thought of that in three seconds because i shaved my mustache like that so things move quick now and you know comics have to adapt and a lot of stand-ups haven't because stand-ups are especially if you're like my age like in between the eras you know well like it was it was that era and now it's the internet a lot of people didn't adapt and you know a lot of people they don't understand that you know survival of the fittest isn't the strongest survive people always that's a myth it's the ones who adapt the best who survive it's not the strongest it's the ones best suited for that new environment and in fact a lot of times within that species when a change in the environment happens the ones who were weak in the previous environment will actually be the ones who adapt best to the new environment and those previously strong ones die out so um it's all about adapting to the internet now and the ones who aren't are just gonna die off and they're dying off and that the that stand-ups have ceded the internet to everybody else because of the stubbornness to stick to what it was like the purity of stand-up is is just naive at best and stupid at more accurate yeah you're probably right i think that's even hitting like even if you go out of the entertainment industry even businesses there were businesses pre-covered that are like oh no no we go by word of mouth and we have very specific clientele and they tell our their friends about us and that's how we get clients and i can remember talking to some people being like do you have instagram to advertise so that people can find out about you it's like no we do word of mouth and then those businesses don't exist anymore because they're like i don't want to necessarily say arrogant but like kind of too arrogant to lower themselves to social media yeah nailed it exactly i mean that's it yeah yeah so you have plans for the future other than focusing on the podcast or is that your main focus at the moment i hope there is a future yeah um if they're the future [Music] i mean i'm do i mean the future i mean i think about this stuff too much but like i mean the ccp they're no joke they kind of remind me of the early nazis and russia kind of reminds me of the early uh fascists in italy they're kind of like a there's like a new uh you know um uh alignment going on there's a new uh those two allies they they kind of the ccp just feels like they're looking to dominate that hemisphere and yeah what they've done with taiwan under the cover of covid by uh you know surreptitiously kind of taking it with that national security law and what they're doing now with uh you know they have this new policy where they're they're reigning in the internet and social media and influencers and they're uh there's this company bgi which is a chinese company that was um supposedly uh doing prenatal tests for women but it was found out they were working with the pla the uh military and they were actually collecting dna to manipulate it and try to create like this is a reuters article this isn't like from you know newsmax so oh man yeah they were and looking to manipulate pathogens and create like super soldiers you know they must have their own manifest destiny the way every empire or rising power does and we're just so lost in our own bubble we don't think about them being the new kid on the block and how they want to expand and because every growing power does and um it's scary i mean we're not america's not the only superpower anymore and we don't have a vulnerable rival like russia was i mean china with that mixed economy that by any means you know necessary economy reminds me of the nazi economy which was very similar it was like look whatever works markets socialism community whatever state controlled whatever works to make us powerful military industrial complex whatever it is we want to we want to grow and that's what that's what the ccp is doing it's by any means necessary economy to become powerful with a mixture of everything and now they've arrived and um you know covid was an interesting thing it was interesting all those protests were on the street in hong kong their most coveted thing they want it they want that one china all these protests pro-democracy protests there and then boom covet hits everybody's inside then boom the national security law is passed where they surreptitiously take they take with their allies in hong kong they take taiwan and um i mean pretty much de facto of taking it it's it's overlooked a lot but they control they control taiwan now and you're going like either that's a coincidence or that was very opportunistic thinking when covet hit but it's just uh it's oh man i don't know anything about this i need to i need to learn very interesting shit yeah very interesting yeah i'm gonna just add some extra stress to my life and delve into that i think it sounds like you need this is my plan i'm gonna go to nashville for the winter see how that's like and then i'm gonna buy like a nice ranch somewhere move a whole bunch of people i like there you're welcome to come if the ccp comes and everything goes to shit we'll just like have a secret bunker underground just in case out far from the cities they'll just wait i know how to shoot a gun i'll be ready i mean that's what people are doing everyone's moving to the country and if this is the new type of warfare if it's like biological warfare there's because you know you can't you can't set off nukes mutually assure destruction we all know that you bomb us we bomb you everything's gone so maybe this is the new way that war is waged sort of uh with manipulated pathogens and that's scary that's scary yeah that doesn't sound fun yeah okay on that positive note if people don't follow you where should they go to follow you and where can they find your podcast yeah uh uh you can watch it on youtube um it's called long days with giannis pappas and you can get it wherever you get your podcast long days with yana's pappas and um you can watch my special blowing the light which was produced by andrew schultz uh that's on youtube for free and um and that's really it just go to those two things and follow me on twitter giannispappis and you'll find me okay i'll link all those below in the show notes as well if people want to check them out thank you very much for coming on thanks that was interesting thanks nice meeting you nice meeting you a fan of your comedy thank you thanks for having me it's a lot of fun you

Surviving COVID-19.

Yannis's background.

Lexipro, neuroticism, and psychopaths.

Yannis and Mikhaila discuss potential danger.

Shows in NY and club requirements.

Country music and moving out of Canada, Austin, and Nashville.

Yannis’s started in comedy and getting shot.

His SNL audition and suffering from PTSD post shot.

Mikhaila's panic attacks during hospital visits.

Yannis responds to the idea of panic attacks.

Being a social worker for 9/11 victims.

Dr. Jordan’s Peterson personality test.

The two types of personalities Yannis has seen in comedy.

How evil operates according to Yannis.

Yannis’s return to comedy.

Pappas’s advice for young comics.

How Yannis writes his comedy sets.

Successful comedy expectations.

Yannis’s view towards public rejection.

How comedy is universally changing quickly.

Yannis’s opinion on humor nowadays.

The story of an MMA trans woman fighter choking out a woman.

Yannis’s perspective towards freedom in America.

Mikhaila’s thoughts on attachment.

Yannis's favorite comics.

Yannis’s daily routine and the changes during COVID.

Yannis's future plans and the Chinese Communist Party.

Wrap Up. Find more Yannis on YouTube, his podcast Long Days with Yannis Pappas, and his special, "Blowing the Light."