Brad Bonar, a comedian and former gym owner, discusses his experiences owning a kickboxing fitness gym and surviving the challenges of COVID-19. He shares stories about the community he built at the gym and the impact of inflation on his business. Brad also talks about his comedic influences and his style of storytelling comedy. He discusses the connection between comedy and depression and how he uses comedy as a form of therapy. Brad shares memories of his father and the lessons he learned from him. He also discusses the importance of finding a grounding place and practicing meditation to deal with depression. He shares his personal journey with depression and how he found solace under a tree. He then discusses the creation of One Degree of Separation, a comedy show that addresses depression and suicide. Brad explains the importance of conversation and the impact it can have on individuals struggling with mental health. He also highlights the power of using humor to address difficult topics and shares his vision for expanding the reach of One Degree of Separation. Finally, Brad reflects on the role of comedians as cowboys, constantly moving from town to town to bring laughter to others.
Takeaways:
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Background
02:54 Owning a Kickboxing Fitness Gym
06:01 Surviving COVID-19
07:42 Closing the Gym and Dealing with Inflation
10:02 Creating a Community at the Gym
11:26 Finding Inspiration from Other Comedians
16:33 Learning Comedy from Erik Myers
19:25 The Connection Between Comedy and Depression
21:41 Influences and Style of Comedy
25:23 Writing and Performing Comedy
28:03 Different Audiences and Clean vs. Dirty Comedy
31:28 Growing Up with an Outlier Father
34:43 Surviving and Thriving in Difficult Circumstances
38:05 Memories of Brad's Father
40:28 Dealing with Depression and Meditation
41:25 Finding Solace Under the Tree
47:02 One Degree of Separation
51:17 The Power of Conversation
56:17 Using Comedy to Address Depression
01:07:58 Expanding the Reach of One Degree of Separation
01:13:20 The Healing Power of Humor
01:15:44 Comedians as Cowboys
To learn more please visit: https://www.1degreeofseparation.life/
Thanks for listening! SUBSCRIBE, Review, Rate, and Share. Contact us: cowboysnoteggheads@gmail.com Let us know if you want a hat ($20), tee shirt ($30), coffee cup ($25), or window decal for your truck. ($30)
Brad Bonar, a comedian and former gym owner, discusses his experiences owning a kickboxing fitness gym and surviving the challenges of COVID-19. He shares stories about the community he built at the gym and the impact of inflation on his business. Brad also talks about his comedic influences and his style of storytelling comedy. He discusses the connection between comedy and depression and how he uses comedy as a form of therapy. Brad shares memories of his father and the lessons he learned from him. He also discusses the importance of finding a grounding place and practicing meditation to deal with depression. He shares his personal journey with depression and how he found solace under a tree. He then discusses the creation of One Degree of Separation, a comedy show that addresses depression and suicide. Brad explains the importance of conversation and the impact it can have on individuals struggling with mental health. He also highlights the power of using humor to address difficult topics and shares his vision for expanding the reach of One Degree of Separation. Finally, Brad reflects on the role of comedians as cowboys, constantly moving from town to town to bring laughter to others.
Takeaways:
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Background
02:54 Owning a Kickboxing Fitness Gym
06:01 Surviving COVID-19
07:42 Closing the Gym and Dealing with Inflation
10:02 Creating a Community at the Gym
11:26 Finding Inspiration from Other Comedians
16:33 Learning Comedy from Erik Myers
19:25 The Connection Between Comedy and Depression
21:41 Influences and Style of Comedy
25:23 Writing and Performing Comedy
28:03 Different Audiences and Clean vs. Dirty Comedy
31:28 Growing Up with an Outlier Father
34:43 Surviving and Thriving in Difficult Circumstances
38:05 Memories of Brad's Father
40:28 Dealing with Depression and Meditation
41:25 Finding Solace Under the Tree
47:02 One Degree of Separation
51:17 The Power of Conversation
56:17 Using Comedy to Address Depression
01:07:58 Expanding the Reach of One Degree of Separation
01:13:20 The Healing Power of Humor
01:15:44 Comedians as Cowboys
To learn more please visit: https://www.1degreeofseparation.life/
Thanks for listening! SUBSCRIBE, Review, Rate, and Share. Contact us: cowboysnoteggheads@gmail.com Let us know if you want a hat ($20), tee shirt ($30), coffee cup ($25), or window decal for your truck. ($30)
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Welcome to Cowboys, Not Eggheads. Home of the brave, not home of the fearful. The world needs more cowboys and fewer eggheads. We're everywhere podcasts are found. So tell your fellow cowboys and let's keep the conversation alive on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Remember to subscribe, rate, review, and share. And now, Cowboys, Not Eggheads with Sam Fisher.
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all the way from Sack of Tomatoes, California. Yes, the big sack. In person, unbelievable. Live. We have nationally known, is that fair to say? Yeah, I'm like an L -list celebrity, I L -list, okay. You have your A -list, your B -list, your C, your D, I think I'm like L, I'm in the L bracket. Excellent, well, nationally known, legitimately nationally known comedian and magician, Brad Bonner. Yes, thank And it's not.
Boner, it's Bon. No, growing up, that caused a lot of fights. We used to have family meetings. We had pledged to our dad we'd do all of our chores for a year and no allowance if we could just change our name. Can we just change the spelling? Spell B -O -N -A -R. Can we just throw another N in there, dad? How much would it cost? I grew up with a friend of mine, his name is Gene Boner, Boner, legitimate, and he was the biggest dude and nobody really messed with him. But I think, if I remember right, I think his grand, I'm not even, you came and mic'd this up.
I think his grandmother's name was Minnie. Really? Yeah. My youngest son named his daughter Rosie. I go, what, what, what were you thinking? Really? What were you thinking? What are you going to do? Name's a name, right? Well, we're, I'm - Yeah, that's easier to say when your name's Fisher. Exactly. Yeah, but I have a C in mine, so everyone screws that up. So that's my big B. Well, I, I, I'm really excited to have you here. Shout out to my friends.
Josiah Keene, who's a very regular supporter of the show, and his wife, Carrie, who I think probably knows you more or better. Her and my wife, matter of fact, my wife's hanging out with her today. There you go. They're besties, they're very, very besties. Oh boy, we better be both She is our greatest volunteer with our nonprofit. She's awesome. Gotcha. And so we'll talk about that in a little bit, but you, so you met Carrie through, you owned a gym.
We did. My wife and I owned a kickboxing fitness franchise, nine round. Kickboxing. Kickboxing fitness, yeah. So you owned it, do you? For six years. Do you kickbox? Not as a fighter. I got in a lot of fights growing up and did martial arts and stuff growing up. My dad was a black belt in judo and we had some friends that were karate instructors. And I was a skinny white kid at a school with like two other white kids. So got in a lot of fights. Gotcha. That kind of gives you the attitude for it. Gotcha. Yeah.
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But we did it, we ran that for six years. We closed it a year and a half ago, September. And what, okay, so COVID did that, did that help the We survived COVID. You know, we only closed for six weeks. And then we opened up against the governor's rules, against everything. Good, good.
for you. We were in a county that was, you know what, you do what you need to do to keep your business open. Amen. We lost tons of members. And then we picked up members that said, I'm going to attend this gym because you're open. Well, yeah. Hey, COVID. Yeah. What prevents COVID? That was, well, here's I mean, my God, that was our - was our thought. We sat there in our gym. First of all, we took off on, they said quarantine for two weeks. I go, let's quarantine behind the windshield.
And so we drove for, we drove two weeks into the of the coat. We drove for a month. My wife had the same thing. In our van, we've got an adventure van. And then we thought, okay, we, cause our customers were still getting charged. It's like, okay, we could get away with a month because of the pandemic, but the people are getting multiple bills now for a gym that's not open. We can't do that. So we sat down and go, hold on a second. Now the liquor stores, they're essential. The head shops essential. Starbucks is essential. I go.
I don't want any of those to close, but essential, and I go, they don't do nothing for your respiratory system, nothing for your health, for your immunity. We're chronic disease here. Yes, I mean, we're trying to, all these, what do they call them? The, I can't think of the, I can't remember. Like if you have high blood pressure or if you - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, the comorbidities. Comorbidities, yeah.
So how do you prevent those? Well, you exercise. Yeah, no kidding. And you have good nutrition. And so what happens? Everybody shuts down the gym and we start ordering Uber Eats. Uber Eats and yeah. Just from garbage, you're eating garbage. It was insane. One of the most, COVID to me was the most insane time of my life. And as I told you earlier, it's why I retired. I just like to, this is nuts. It was absolutely nuts. One of the biggest moments for me that I thought was just absolutely insane is I was at,
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Whole Foods, Whole Foods. And this is when the mask mandate, even in Omaha, Nebraska, we had a mask mandate. And there was an actual sign that said everyone over 21 has got to, it doesn't matter who you are, if you're buying alcohol, you have to show your ID. Okay, fine. And it said, please lift your mask to show ID. And I just.
I just thought that was, there's just a twisting the logic and common sense just went so far out the window. We did a video, we said, we just, we sent a video out to all of our gym members, said, look, we're essential for us. There's no comedy. I can't get an audience, you can't have an audience. So our two sources of income are comedy and a gym. And we said, this is all we have. It's if we close this and I go move into my bedroom at my mom's house at, you know.
60 years old is not ideal. And we just said, we're essential and if you want to cancel your membership, we'll cancel it. We didn't have a policy. It's like, what do you want? You want to cancel? Do you want us to reimburse you for the last month that we were closed? Whatever you want to do, we'll do it. And we lost a ton of members.
And we lost friends. My wife lost one of her best friends. Yes. She said, you're going to kill people opening your gym. One of the reasons I started this podcast is I had a friend in Australia who thought we needed to lock down like they did. Yeah. I mean, and when they say lockdown, that means they could leave for an hour a day. Oh yeah, right. Australia was horrible. For a year and a year and a half time.
And he said, you know, you're just killing people in America. And I'm like, you're out of your mind and he de -friended me. And I'm like, what in the world? Why is he such a naked head and why am I such a cowboy? Matter of fact, that's when Kerry took over our website because this was the gout. She was one of my wife's best friends and she did our website and designed it and set it up. And she said, I want nothing to do with you people. Here's your passwords for everything. I'm done. Good luck to you.
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And yeah, yeah, it was, they were the type though that had their groceries sent to their, delivered in their garage and they would sit for 24 hours and then they would spray it all down. And then they would, before they would bring anything in the house. Let's get off COVID my friend. I will blow a gasket. So what, no, what killed us was inflation. We made it through COVID. We never really recovered all the way, but we had people calling us saying, look, we're paying 400 a month extra for everything right now.
and we have to reduce something. We don't have more income and Jim's gotta go. And we lost 60 members within a month because of inflation, you know? And we just looked at it, it's like we're getting further behind on our rent to our landlord and we saw an out and it's like, let's just be done. Let's just be done with it. The stress of not knowing, is this the month we're gonna close? Okay, well, we made it this, maybe next month are they gonna evict us? And so.
There was a big relief and heartbreak and all that at the same time. Yeah, very sweet. So what was your number one rule in your gym? Don't touch the dog. I swear to you. I have a miniature Australian shepherd, she goes everywhere with me. Oh, the high strong animal. And she does not like strangers to pet her. And she'll come up and sniff and say hi to you, but if you pet her, she'll nip. And so we thought, well, if she's in the gym every day, she'll get used to people. Six years.
Seriously, when people would come in, they're filling out their waiver, I would yell at the gym, what's the first rule of the gym in unison? They would, don't touch the dog. We had a lady for two years, she brought bacon. She would sit on the floor and feed the dog bacon and the dog would let her pet her while she's chewing the bacon. And then when the bacon is gone, she's like, no. So. Hilarious. Yeah. Well, I thought, so it's funny. So I have a rule. No, I have two rules.
no one follows them, but they're my rules to the heck with everybody. I'm a big, big CrossFit guy, you know, and yes, it's a cult. Our gym was very cultish. Yes. Well, I mean, we're not here killing, we're not beheading people. We're just trying to get people to get better. That's all, but it is a cult. It's life changing, life changing behavior. It's a cult. Anyway, so my two rules, my gym is number one, I don't ever want to see anybody have their hands on their hips.
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I got that from probably my high school football course. Yeah, yeah, that's a great. We had that rule with our employees. Which is between the ears kind of a thing. It's not, some people think, well, I absolutely, this is the only way I can rest. That's baloney. To me, it's just a mental, just being sharp mentally. And the second rule that I have is, and no one ever follows it, but I follow it, is don't, after a hard workout or what we call them wads and crossfit, you know, workout of the day, wad. After a wad, never ever.
hit the floor, which is hard to do sometimes. Today I wanted to, but I didn't. I walked away. I walked away with my hands on my hips. Anyway, so your rule is don't touch the dog. That's funny. It was such an amazing, my wife did an amazing job of creating an environment and family there.
And you know, we run into gym members, they go, I miss that gym so much. I go, you'll never have a gym like that again. They go, yeah, I don't think so. I think that was a season and was just this magical place. Matter of fact, we've had a film crew following us for our nonprofit for two years and they were there the day we closed our gym and filmed and interviewed people. We haven't seen it yet, but people, we just see them outside and people sobbing. And he goes, I've never seen a community like.
anywhere in any kind of business. Yeah, it was an amazing place. You know listeners, you should be lucky to ever belong to something like that, honestly. And everybody had their gym names. So you had to learn two names. Nickname then? Yeah, everybody. Speed Racer and Queenie. Josiah was Speed Racer. I don't even remember why. And Carrie was Queenie. Queenie? Yeah, I still can't, if I call her Carrie, she goes, ew. Yeah, don't do that again. It's Queenie. It's Queenie, yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Huh. Yeah.
Which was awkward sometimes like we had one her her gym name was hot mama and I saw her in a grocery store and I couldn't remember her real name. It's like hey Hot mama, how you doing? So what was yours? Magic man magic man. Okay, and my wife was boss. So mine I myself Mine is almost the tomb thrown. He had a I saw him but two days ago or yesterday I don't remember was yet doesn't matter. I just saw you this week right right right a gig and
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I told him that the joke that I came away with, or I thought was hilarious is that he identifies by the pronouns of old and fart. And that is funny, my friend. I'm in transition between middle to old age and my pronouns are old and fart. Yeah, that there's funny. The first time they asked me for pronouns, I did an interview with NPR and this was maybe five years ago when the pronoun thing hadn't really become a thing. He got really,
I mean, I'm 60, so last time I was in school was a long time ago. And I got this email, what pronouns do you want to be used by? And this was kind of my reaction. I went, ah, shit, what are pronouns? And I had to Google pronouns. Oh, he him, I mean, he him. Or diagram a sentence. Yeah, exactly. Pronouns, I don't remember. So I'm sure you've been on a lot of podcasts, a lot of interviews.
A few. So, and as I just mentioned, George Lynch is my favorite guitar player and I feel bad for him because he'll do like six podcasts in a row or something. Right, right. And they're always the same questions. He hates it. So my question to you, sir, is what's the one question that you hate being asked? Because I won't ask it today. I don't think I have one. Really? No, no. You know, especially when we talk about our nonprofit, I declare it from the rooftops, our show that we do, our comedy show about depression and suicide. Right.
And so everywhere I go, it doesn't matter, every waiter, every bartender, anywhere I go, I sit next to somebody on a plane, I talk about what we do. So I can ask you about how you do that car trick. You can ask any questions you want. Oh, one more question I had for you before we get into the, tell me about your car, Kimberly.
Dead Carrier's. Queenie. So a friend of mine buys and sells cars and he had this car, he goes, I don't know what to do with this car. I go over to his house, he's got a 2003 Thunderbird, which are the retro looking ones, right? And somebody had taken a knife and scratched every single body panel, not like walked past it, but like carved every single body panel, cut holes in the roof, the convertible top, sliced the seats, the door panels, the dash.
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took a can of spray paint, spray paints, the whole center cluster, the dash, poured house paint over that. Somebody made somebody mad. Snapped mirrors, visors, slashed a couple tires. And so my buddy goes, what do I do with this? It's got low miles, mechanically the car's perfect, but cosmetically, I go, well, it would cost you more to restore it than the car's worth. You're gonna have to strip that paint down to the metal because of all the scratches in it, you're gonna have to replace the seats, the whole dash cluster. By the time you get there, you're gonna be 15, 20 grand into a car that's,
maybe worth 14, you know, 12. And I go, what would be cool is to make it look like an old car. They're so retro looking, do a patina paint job, make it look like an old car with rust on it, right? And make it look like a car from the 50s with the original. And so that's what I did with it. I go, so what happened? He goes, oh, he goes, my buddy Ron was 72 and his girlfriend, Kimberly, she was 54 and she was nuts. So he says, you're nuts, you need to move out.
So she hits him in the back of the head with an ax. Oh! Kills him. Throws a sheet over him so she doesn't have to see him. And then she spends two days vandalizing. Goes out to the garage, vandalizes his car, his baby. I've got the hardtop for it. It was on a lift. She couldn't reach it, so it's in perfect shape. Then she goes back in the house. She said, she calls her daughter. She said, I killed Ron with an ax a couple of days ago. I think I'm gonna kill myself. And the daughter calls 911, swats.
They surround the house, they get her on the phone. She says, all right, I'll come outside. Then they hear a gunshot and they send the robot in. They find two deceased, one with a gunshot, one with an ax to the back of the head. And anyway, I got a really good deal. And I named it. It's got her name on it on the rocker panel, right behind the passenger, on the passenger side on the rocker down low. And a girl's handwriting that says Kimberly, the car's haunted.
I was say, is it like Christine? Kimberly is like Christine. Absolutely, the dashlights flicker. We can't find a short, it's just the dashlights flicker. Everything works fine on it. And then I keep a, so I've got her name on it and then I've got a DVD I keep in there on the dash. So I married an ex -murderer, the Mike Myers movie. You're just stabbing it to Kimberly. The thing is, I want to sell, we don't drive it anymore. It's like, I need to sell it, but I got to sell it with the whole story. Oh, for sure. And I have all the news links too for the newspaper stories about the murder, suicide and all that. So.
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Interesting. Yeah, you get a good deal on those cars. OK, let's talk a little bit about comedy. It's I've stated on here, so I got to state it again. My goal by the end of this year is to do an open mic night. I don't even think I'm funny, but who cares? Oh, there's lots of comics that aren't funny. That's true. Well, and being funny to your friends and being funny on stage are two different things. Very different. I think I have a sense of humor. Yeah, I think it's a dark sense of humor.
But I actually took lessons from a guy and I wonder if you, who, we don't know. Did you know a guy by the name of Eric Myers? You ever hear of Eric Myers? No, nope. Okay, well check him out and listeners, I want you to check him out on YouTube. Fantastic, he had the three, great guy. He had a screechy little voice, like, is that really your voice? Yeah, that was really his voice. But he had, and I said he had in past dance, and I'll get to that in a minute.
Yeah. You had the three things that I believe are important in comedy. Physicality, content, and energy. And it was fascinating to have the opportunity to take lessons from him. And it was during the pandemic. Did in school? Like, or did was a one -on -one. Oh, really? Cool. We did a call. Very cool. Or it was on Skype or something. I don't know. We just did a call. And so he told me how to write comedy, which was just...
Yeah. Mind blowing to There's a structure. Yeah, there's a structure and a functionality to it. He told me how he wrote comedy and so forth and he, and I'm gonna do this in memory of him because he is, he was a guy that fought a lot of demons as a lot of comedians do. Yeah. 80 % of comedians struggle with depression. I was going to ask you that question and you just answered it. and the other 20 % probably aren't funny. Right. Unless you're literally capable Unless you're literally capable of Unless you're literally of it. Unless you're Unless you're Unless you're Unless you're literally capable of it. Unless you're literally capable of it. Unless you're literally capable of it. Unless you're literally capable of it. Unless you're literally
Yeah, and so yeah, his demons got the best of him. And from what here's, from my understand, this is what happened. He, uh, he had just lost his father to cancer. This is right in the middle of the COVID and he was very close to his father and he was on the road and he didn't like to fly. So he normally just took the Greyhound bus between gigs and he was, uh, in Colorado Springs on his way to Dallas and it's three o 'clock in the morning and he's on a Greyhound bus and he has a panic attack, which is a real thing. Yeah. Yeah.
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Um, and the bus just let me out, let me out. And then he's somewhere by the Texas border on some highway somewhere and they let him out and he's five o 'clock in the morning. He got hit by a, by a van killed him. And I just, it was, my wife told me I was just absolutely devastated, but I know that he struggled with the alcohol and I knew that he struggled with, um, marijuana and, and, uh, been in rehab and.
The nicest guy, and again, you gotta check him out, Eric. Yeah, so many artists in general struggle with depression, and I think part of that is that dark depression is where, is the source of so much art. Because depression has been described to me as rage turned inward. Yeah, I could see that.
I don't know how you get art out of that, but there are so many, Robin Williams. Those dark moments, those dark places, like when, I had a friend of mine, his mom dies. They knew she was dying, she was close, and he's sitting in his living room with his dad and they're waiting for the coroner to come and get her or the service. And he goes, all right, dad, you got this. I got shows tonight and tomorrow. So I gotta go. And literally left his dead mom in the living room to go do a show.
And he goes, if one person, if anybody would have known and said, sorry to hear about your mom, he goes, I couldn't have gone on stage. I go, and how did the shows goes? He goes, they, he goes, I crushed. I crushed. You know, because it's when you're in those dark, dark places, you just dig deep. And it's like, I'm going to murder these people. Yeah. You know, and it is from so much. And like with music, when I write music, it's always, it's always when I'm in that dark, dark place and it helps, you know, to articulate that darkness.
get you out of it and make gives you a perspective of looking at it there instead of being absolutely therapy. Absolutely. I don't do, I don't use my guitar on stage. I mean, I grew up playing in bands and singing since I was a little kid, my guitars, I've got my guitar tattooed on my forearm. Um, and, and, but I, it's, it's like, it's my therapy. It's like, I need to get away. It's like, I just need my guitar and some silence. Cause you lose time and space playing guitar. Yeah, absolutely. Um, interesting. Yeah. Um, so I saw Brad the other night and so,
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I told your son who lives here in Omaha, I told him, you know, I see a little bit of Sam Kennison who's my hero. Oh really? And I mean, obviously the content's not quite. Right. But the - It was a corporate game. There's a bit of rage. I would say there's a little bit of, I mean, you're embracing a little rage. I mean, it's not as visceral as Kennison. Yeah, yeah. But I could see a little like, rah! You know, like you weren't, you know.
I could see that and then I also thought Larry the Cable Guy a little bit. Oh really? I got those redneck roots. I could see that. Yeah. I mean, well it's very genuine maybe. Maybe it's genuine, maybe that's what it was, but that's... So who would you... How would you describe your style? If you could... Who are the two comedians you're most likely? You can't say Sam Kinison or Larry the Cable Guy. My dad and my uncles.
For real, that's what I try to model. My family. Honestly, God, I remember my dad and my uncles getting together and them telling stories, because I don't tell a lot of jokes. You saw my show. I don't do a lot of jokes. It's stories. It's stories. Yeah. And you turn that story into a joke with punch lines and structure and the places to pause and laugh and along the way. But that's how my dad and my uncles would tell stories. And our family reunions in Wyoming, we would get together. Your face ached.
from laughing. Like hurting, yeah. And I loved and I love and my, what I try to model is that laughter at a family reunion, hearing my dad and my uncles tell these stories and they were real stories. And they might embellish or that's one of the things of comedy is figuring out what words to leave out and how to shorten and streamline a story to make it quicker and easier to understand for an audience. There's those things, but.
Honestly, my dad and my uncles were so funny to be around. And I have my favorite comics, you know, of course, you know, Chappelle and he's brilliant. He's like the prior of today. I haven't seen, I'd like to see more of And Bill Burr. I mean, they're like the Carlin. I like Burr They're like the Carlin and, you know. He's my age, he's my age actually. You're older than me. Yeah, I like Burr a lot. Yeah.
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I do too, I like both of them. And they push edges and boundaries and they talk about stuff nobody'll talk about. I heard an interview with Chris Rock on Howard Stern and Stern was asking about what makes somebody a hack? What's a hack comic? And Chris Rock in his head, yeah, we all got our hack jokes. We all have our jokes that are easy, the fart jokes, the pee jokes, the wiener jokes. He goes, what takes you out of that hack zone is level of difficulty.
and I'd never heard it described that way. He goes, for example, Chappelle, I think it was a Sticks and Stones special, he opened with a suicide joke about Anthony Bourdain. That was his opener. And he crushed it, and it was funny. And it wasn't offensive. It was just the way that he put it together. It was like, people laugh for different reasons, but sometimes there's this laughter of appreciation of seeing what you just did. And that's a different kind of, other than being surprised and shocked.
You know. So how do you, how do you write your material? What's your method? Life happens and I, uh, I have something happening to me, a story, and I tell it to my friends. Oh, I tell it to everybody I see over and over again. Um, and with that you refine it, you streamline it, you take out extraneous things that didn't make it funnier, um, or that made it more confusing. Um, you know, like the murder suicide lady, I probably told that story, um, you know,
a couple of dozens of times to different people before I ever told it on stage. Right. And it was just figuring how to structure it. You know, there's a line where I say, you know, where she says, I'm a survivor of a murder suicide. It stops the room. In a comedy club, the room goes dead silent. Yeah. For as long as I wait. Oh, yeah. Because you don't know how to react to it. What? Yeah. And then it's like, which one? You know, and then there's a punchline that takes all of that tension and relieves it.
And so it's, that's my, is it, you know, it's stories about my kids and my family and my dad. you write this stuff down? Are you just, it's in your head or what? I used to write it down. I don't write it down so much anymore, but I'll write down, I don't write set lists very much. I've got, you know, hours of material now. So it's kind of like, whatever I, oh, I haven't done this for a while. I'll do that. Right. But sometimes I'll write down a set list cause I'll, I've got more jokes that I've forgotten than I remember. So I'll write down a set list and the topic, but.
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Once I start on these stories, I've told them so many times before I ever get on stage. So I came, I said, Kimberly, boom, there's a story, there's a joke. I've told that on stage about the car, not very often, but - But I mean, that's the best word, it's a story. And if you were to hear me tell that story to somebody a year ago, it would probably be pretty close to word for word. Yeah. You know, just because you've thought out all the things that don't count, that don't matter, that -
you know, some details don't make it fun. They just make it more confusing. So it's trying to figure out what do I take out of that to streamline it and to make it funny and a set up and a punch line like that. What's the punch line at the end? That's a funny story. Interesting story. So what's the punch line? Well, I got a really good deal. Right, right. Right. Exactly. And that's how kind of Eric taught me how to write. And he was he was a premise guy. Like, what's your premise? What's the premise? That's how it all is. Yeah. And he goes, all right, right down there. And so we went over it. You're giving me four premises. I it. And I did.
It was my homework. And then he goes, okay, now just write. He just let it write, just write. And then the set up punchline. I used to do that write it all out because there's something different that happens in your brain when you're writing it out. Because it takes longer. You think of things that you didn't think of when you were just speaking it. And so there is something in the process of writing it out. But I'm pretty lazy. And finding that punchline and finding the set up and the punchline is...
It seems to me it's a very, it's an art. It's amazing. Well, it's interesting. The punch line isn't always necessarily the funniest part of it. No, it's just the end of it. You have to tell the audience, this is where you laugh. Right. Because sometimes I would have a funny story and I'd get up on stage and I would tell the story and you can see the audience wanting to laugh and the smiles and then the story would be over and there's just kind of like, oh yeah, that was a funny story. But you had to figure a way to let the audience know.
this is the end, this is where, and sometimes literally it would just be a gesture. And you don't know, you have to, you do it on stage over and over and, cause stories that are funny to your friends aren't always funny on stage. And stories and jokes that are funny on stage, your friends will go, that's stupid. You're not gonna do that on stage, are you? And then it crushes on stage. And the only way you know is by getting up there and.
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And putting in your 10 ,000 hours, and the more you do it, the more it's like, okay, this is gonna work, this is funny. It depends too. I mean, we were talking the way over here, Brad does mostly corporate gigs, which is a completely different world. Very different Than like the funny bone world. You've gotta break the ice, you don't have a warmup act, you are the warmup act and the headliner. So, but my work in corporate land ain't gonna work in nightclub. Absolutely. And so, do you like going to nightclubs once in a while? Oh, I love doing clubs. Just kind of open up. Oh yeah, yeah, because I can say whatever I want. Just let it roll. I can cuss all I want.
Like I've got a dry bar. I was gonna say you have a very clean act. Yeah, because it's a corporate gig. And even my regular gigs. When I say clean, are you a F bomber? Are you a shit ass? I don't have very much that's funnier if I cut. I'm still telling the same stories. There's some stories I'll tell in a club. You might say shit and it might give a little emphasis. But even with the corporate, I said shitty at the corporate gig. You probably won't even notice it, remember it.
when I talked about the girl on the bridge. Correct. The girl jumping off the bridge. Oh, I do, I do remember. So that's a shitty bridge to jump off of. And I've tried doing it with other words, but the thing is people don't remember it as a cuss word because it's a real life situation and it's somebody's life. You want to get somebody's attention when they're getting ready to jump off a bridge. Right. And what I really said to her, I'm just telling the truth of the story. It was real. It was real. It's like, yeah, she's going to jump off this bridge that's like 40. It's like, that's a shitty bridge to jump off.
That is unbelievable. You're gonna sprain your ankle. I mean Seinfeld doesn't cuss and he's one of the best comedians out there. It is harder, it's easier. And this is what's hard for newer comics to understand is there's different reasons why people laugh. I've been at a show where people laugh through the whole show and then they leave and they go, he was disgusting and I will never come to this club ever again. But they laughed through the whole show.
Because it's the shock people laugh because they're shocked. It's like, oh, I can't believe he said that. That doesn't make it funny, but they will laugh because they're shocked. They'll laugh because they're uncomfortable. Because they'll laugh because they don't want to be the only one not laughing. A people laugh or smile when they're uncomfortable. Absolutely. For sure. Yeah, yeah. I think that's why half the people go to comedy shows.
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Well, to a comedy club, if I go to a corporate gig, I'm there because of other reasons, but if I go to a funny bone, I have an expectation of having a good old time, of laughing at I want to break from life. Every fart joke that's funny, I mean, it's just a different. Yeah. And to me - There's a frame of mind you go into in a club. Yes. As you walk into it. Yeah. And I've been thinking about, I mean, I'm just like, I'm a fairly brave individual, but I got to tell you, getting up on stage,
for five minutes and do an open mic night is, it's a little nerve wracking. But the thing that I've noticed is when I've gone to those is that most of the people in the audience are the people that are up on the stage anyway. And everybody there is, they want you to succeed. Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you go to a comic club, people want you to You invested, you paid money. They want you to succeed. Absolutely. So it's not like nobody's pulling against you. They want you to be fun.
Yeah, at a corporate thing, it's not, it's like, oh, what's this guy gonna say? There was a lady at the show who never laughed or smiled, I think, through the whole thing. The one that we went to? Yeah. She was sitting right up in front of you, I think, a little bit in front of you. Oh, you knew exactly where she sat. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm 80, you see, that's one of the things with ADD, which is like 98 % of all comedians. You see everything - My sister -in is to my left, I don't know if from where I was, but my sister -in -law, two guys stand for me? Yeah.
Love the show. I saw her rolling over. She loved it. She loved it. It's perfect. She wants to see you in Fargo, so have to get with you. God, I got so many questions. Let's talk about, you talked about your dad earlier. It sounds like your dad was sort of like my dad. My dad was an outlier. He was right there in that picture right there, and that's me on the horse with him. Out in Nebraska.
Yeah, my dad was born and raised in Wyoming. Okay. So yeah, I mean, my dad was a school, old school racist. Yeah. Yeah. that's the time that they grew up in. Absolutely. But an outlier, no filter, zero filter. We actually have a book upstairs that call that my dad's name was JB and it's there's a guy that wrote a book called shit. My dad says, which is great. Yeah. And we did shit JB says, and I, and for whatever reason,
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about a year and a half before he died, I'm like, I gotta start writing some of this down. And he, lo and behold, he had a terminal cancer and that was, I'm glad we did that. I mean, just because it's just unbelievable wisdoms. Yeah, and just real raw. One of my favorite things about the show that you went to is my son on the way home, he goes, yeah, Sam asked me,
looked over at me and go, are these real stories? And he's like, yeah. And the reason I ask that, Brad, is because my sense is that you're a genuine guy, that you're not really making stuff up. This is true stuff. I mean, you know, so the names are all the same and, you know, that's truly what his daughter's name was. And I mean, he does a bit about his daughter. I'm like, whoa. Having her first time. Yeah. Yeah. You can actually go to YouTube, I think, and see it. But, uh,
Tell me about your dad. He was not a comedian. He truly did have a backhoe company. Yeah. He actually, he worked for, my dad's father left three days before my dad was born. He was the youngest of four. Okay. So he left. He went up. So he met his father twice. Once at a bar. He was at a bar shooting pool. My dad was a pool hustler. And one of his, my dad's uncles was there and said, you know, that's your dad over there.
And he was No, I didn't know that. My dad was 15. He goes, oh wow. And he went up. And so that's the first time he met his dad. And then on his death bed, he wanted to see all of his blood children before he passed. And he goes, I wish I wouldn't have gone. He was just shriveled up, dying of cancer. And so my dad's stepfather molested all of my dad's sisters, probably my dad too, and went to prison. And my grandma moved from Lovell, Wyoming where they were at.
to Riverton, Wyoming to be closer to the prison. My dad was 11 years old. He said, I don't wanna stay here. I wanna go back to the farm in Lovell. So he got on a bus and he stopped in Thermopolis, Wyoming. And there was a train car full of beer and he robbed it. He stole all the beer that he could carry off and hide in the bushes. And he would go into town and sell beer. And he made enough money to rent a room. He was 11, made enough money to rent a room from these two old ladies. This is your dad. My dad.
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And got a job working for Coca -Cola when he was 12. And he would, so he'd go to school and they would go work for Coca -Cola and he rented this room from these old ladies. A couple of years later, my grandma followed him to Thermopolis and rented a room in the same house. And these ladies had no family. They told my grandma, if you take care of us till we die, we'll leave you the house. And that was the house my grandma had when I was a little kid, going to visit my grandma was this house. He had a gang when he was 12, they would go rob cars during football games and sporting things. And that was,
He just survived and he literally was a pool hustler. We would shoot pool and he would spot us everything but the eight ball and he would just clear the table. We wouldn't even shoot. He was an amazing pool player and taught us how to practice and how to, you know, and he never had a father around. But he did straighten himself out in the sense of.
Yeah, well he worked for Coca -Cola when he started when he was 12. He got a scholarship. How old did they think he was? Yeah, I don't know. They probably didn't care then, in Wyoming, a little town. He got a scholarship to go play guitar and sing in a band, and so he went to Casper College, and he would travel to the high schools playing guitar. I still have his 1957 Rickenbacker that he got when he was 16 years old. Well, that's worth some money. Yeah. And so...
And he still worked for Coca -Cola that whole time. He won a sales contest and got a job offer in California. I was three years old and came out to California, thought he had died and gone to heaven. It was all green. And so we moved to California when I was three. And he worked for Dr. Pepper till I was about, I must've been maybe 16 or he got fired. And we had bought some property and he had a tractor, just a front loader. And he had moved dirt around for our property.
lost his job, so he just found construction, hey, you need some stuff cleared. He ended up getting a backhoe. And then at one point, we were probably doing between at least two, $3 million a year in gross revenue with his excavation company. We've had about a dozen backhoes, Is that a horror story, is that true? Oh, honest to God, true story. I love it. As a matter of fact. Because can completely see it. As a matter of I grew up in situations like that. Yeah, yeah.
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As a matter of fact, I got hired for a gig. It was in South Lake Tahoe. They were going to North Lake Tahoe, which is about a 45 minute drive in this company. They hired me to entertain the bus. They go, can you just be on the microphone and just like make us laugh on the drive? I go, yeah. I go, they said we actually have a tour guide who knows the historical things on the way. I go have her sit next to me. She'll tell me stuff. And then I'll just embellish and make things up. And so we're going, well, that road goes past the Ponderosa Ranch where they filmed Bonanza.
is in Lake Tahoe. And the bus actually goes past that. I go, hey, there's the Bonanza. I go, you know, they buried all their horses there. All of them, Hop Sing, Little Joe, Hoss, but they left the legs up in the air and they did picnic tables. And you could have a picnic table next to your favorite. Right, so I'm just making this up, right, to get a laugh. And so then I go, okay, that reminds me of a true story. And so I'm on the bus, on the mic, and I tell this story. Yeah, my dad, these people said, hey, can you come bury our horse for us? And...
He digs this big hole, looks deep enough, he drags the horse, drops it in, the family's crying, watches it, and all the legs are sticking up. Boom, boom. So he curls the bucket and he just breaks all the legs off and jams them in the hole. So I tell this story. I find that to be funny. I tell this story and this lady friend of mine, she goes, that's not a real story, that's made up. I go, oh no, the other stories are made up. This is a true story. She goes, no, it's not. I go, call my mom. She goes, I'm not gonna call. I go, fine, I'll call my mom.
And I called my mom, I've got the bus mic on my phone. I go, hey mom, oh hi Bradley, how are you doing today? I go, good, can you tell that story real quick about when dad buried the horse? Well, you know, he dug this hole and he thought it was deep enough, but all the legs were sticking up and he just snapped them off with the backhoe and jammed them in the hole and the bus is dead silent. And then I go, okay, thanks mom, talk to you later. I hang up, I go, don't you ever question me. I say it's a real story, it's a real story. I will call my mom. But yeah.
That's a true story. When my dog died when I was eighth grade, my dad, my dad, I've told the story so it doesn't matter. My dad, what did you do with Georgia girl? You know, oh, oh, oh. And he's like, oh, I put her in a gunny sack and I threw her in the river. True story. You can't make it up. You know, and God bless. I mean, I I'm not a victim because that happened, but that's the way I grew up.
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Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's what we did. You know, we got so many dogs buried on the property and yeah, we do too now. We have a hill because of that. Yeah, because of the Georgia girl incident. The story about hearing my dad too, after he died, after he passed away, when I was working on my van, remember I told where he's I just heard his voice clear his day. Yes. Yeah. I swear to you that was it was I swear to you. I heard him and he was right there. I believe you. I was actually in CrossFit one day. This has been about six years ago, but both my parents are gone now and.
One day, well, yeah, I don't know if I've shared this or not, but one day it was clear as I'm doing box jumps, which are awful, especially on old people. There is a song by the band, that's why I'm gonna be a great It's a band, a song that reminds you of your dad? Yeah, it was, it doesn't matter. It's a song basically, there's a lyric in the song that says, forgive me father, forgive me mother. So I don't know, it basically goes through my,
all your family, you know, like, forgive me, I have to, it's like, I'm leaving home and I'm, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm sitting there doing these box jumps and I swear on the Bible, your Bible, whoever's Bible, that I saw an image of my father on my right hand, I saw an image of my mother on the left. They were there. They were there. And it is eerie business, my friend. Eerie business.
Did your dad's death, did that provoke some depression? I was not depressed. It didn't, no. It no. That wasn't part of the We were all amazed he lived to be 79, the way he took care of himself. Right, - It's one of those, both my parents, it was a deal like, well, I'm glad they're gone because there's no more pain, because they both had these illnesses. I have But it was tough. I mean, boy, it's tough. I have a meditation idea. I don't know if you wanna talk about this now, or when we talk about our show, or - Sure.
You know, one of the things that helped me deal with depression, I had an amazing therapist who gave me some meditation, like he had a scripted system of meditating and he said, I'm going to read these off and you know, you need to find a place where you feel connected to the earth, a place where you feel grounded, where you feel like you're at one with nature, whatever it is, you need this place. I go, Oh, I know exactly where it is. There's a tree in the middle of the desert. It's between Wellsville, Nevada and Snowville, Utah out in the middle of the desert. And from where this tree is,
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You can't see another tree in any direction. And it's this beautiful cypress tree. It's just perfectly formed. And every time I drive by it, I go, it's amazing that it's like, my nephew sent me a message when I was talking about, I posted something about this tree. He goes, yeah, Uncle Brad, we call this the f*** you tree. It's like, I'm gonna survive and I'm gonna thrive in this harsh, dark, hard to survive. And somebody needs to see me living fully in this harsh environment.
And so that's the place where I'd go. And he's all right, you need to be sitting there, you need to be grounded. I want your shoes off. I want you to, what does the earth feel like? What do you hear? What do you smell? What's the season? What's the weather? I mean, it was script. And so my meditation now is that that's where I go. Now, whenever I drive past that tree, I have family in Northern Utah. So there's a shortcut we take around the Salt Lake. You stop the car and go to the tree. I sit under the tree. So I've sat under that tree and I've walked through snow to sit under it.
I've been there at the end of summer when the grass is all dry. I know how high the grasses are in the springtime. If I'm sitting, I could just barely see over the grasses in the spring. There's death all around the tree, because it's the only shade. So whatever predators, they drag their prey there to demolish, and there's just bones everywhere all around it. I found skulls out there. I've seen parts of skin from Bobcat Mountain Lion. It's just - Something about a desert, isn't Yeah. And matter of fact,
a couple of months ago, one of the times I went by there, I made a little stool and I've got a little stool now to sit on out there, because my knees hurt and I'm older. So I go to that tree and it's changed now, but there's four people there now. And when my depression's, mornings are usually the worst. I have a song that I hum in my head, or if I buy myself, I'll play it, that helps me get there. And...
And then there's four people there and it's my dad now. And then my grandma, my dad's mom, who never had anything, she was always dirt poor, born and raised in Wyoming. She's always sitting on a five gallon bucket. I don't know why. And then my best friend, my best friend Tim, Tim died five years ago. He was my best, dearest friend I'll probably ever have. And then Jesus is there with me, but he's always, I don't know why, but I never see him.
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He's always behind me. He's behind me and he has his hand on my shoulder. And I have the most, I have, I don't feel like I've lost my dad. I talk to him and my grandma and Tim and Jesus. And it's kind of my prayer meditation. And I just, when my depression's the worst, I can lay it all out to them. Here's what I'm going through today. And here's what I'm dealing with. And here's what I'm afraid of.
and here's what's going on. And my dad'll just give me his old, write that shit down. Keep, quick, keep. How many times have I told you, damn it, to get that shit out of your head and write it down? You gotta write it down, write it down. You know, my grandma, I remember I had this day, I literally was thinking I need to take our One Degree show, this show about depression and suicide. I needed to put it aside because I'm not booking enough regular comedy because I'm spending all my time on this. I just need to put this aside as like a hobby.
and spent all my time doing regular comedy because I'm just, I'm not getting enough money from this. And I had one of these mornings and I was broke and I was, and the money and the financial stress and all that. And it was before my dad passed. So it was just my grandma and Tim and Jesus. And I tell my grandma, I go, here's what's going on. And my grandma, she just, she goes, you know, you have more than I ever had in my entire life. And that's sobering. It's like, oh, yeah, you're right. I guess I'm not going to cry. I do. And I get to Tim and he says, you saved my life.
than once. You walked me to a hospital when I was suicidal and he stood up to tell me, I love this and I love what you're doing. And then it gets to Jesus and I never see him but he just leans in and he says, you're saving lives of my children. Does it matter if you're broke for a little while? And it's real and so I don't miss my dad. I feel like I still talk to him.
and I talk to him anytime I want and I can go there. I just need a quiet place. It could be anywhere. Or I could just close my eyes wherever I'm at. And I just have, and I hear his advice and his, you know, and his cussing and his voice. Powerful. Yeah, yeah. Powerful stuff. Yeah, I don't suffer depression because both my parents are gone. But they say you don't become a man until you lose your father. I do believe that. Yeah, that's interesting. So I've been a man for a decade now.
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I only got three years then. Welcome to Maynard. But yeah, it's a profound experience. And when you lose your mom, it'll be a different experience because you'll, well, my experience was that I felt orphaned, which is kind of a victim mentality to have. I mean, it didn't break me. I'm not broke, but that's my, initially my thoughts was I just felt alone. Yeah, you're really, really alone. But my parents, they raised me to be strong.
And the way I handle it is a reflection of them. That's When we had bullies, it wasn't because they used bad words, they actually hit us. My first bully, my dad said, yeah, next time he knocks you down, punch him in the throat. That's how you dealt with it. I still remember the kid gasping for air. Yeah, yeah, bullies should be dealt with swiftly and severely.
certainly in my opinion. I mean, but we're men and women obviously it's a different deal. If girls get bullied they handle it differently. Yeah. We've talked about that on here. So anyway, so let's this... So what brothers are for. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So let's talk about just kind of, you know, the fourth point I did want to get across was tell us more or tell us about One Degree of Separation. One Degree of Separation? Yep, One Degree of Separation. It's a, your nonprofit. Tell me about it.
So the show's called One Degree of Separation, a funny look at depression and suicide. And the one degree is if you don't struggle with depression, you know somebody. Everyone's connected to it. Everybody knows someone. And it came about, it was six years ago, September 20th.
I had a 5150, which in California is, it's not in California. Hey, I'm a Van Halen fan, dude. I know exactly what that means. If I'm in California, everybody, you know, You said that the other day, 5150, I'm like, I know what that is. Yeah, you know, that's just a California code. Right, right. It's just a California, I didn't realize that. Penal Yeah, penal code. It's a 72 hour lockup in a mental hospital, usually against your will for being suicidal, a danger to yourself or others. Nebraska, they call it, well, I don't know, it must be similar to EPC, Emergency Protective Custody. Yeah, Wyoming has a different type, something 25 in Wyoming. And,
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So I was 54 years old and here I am in a mental hospital and diagnosed with depression. I never thought I had depression, because that's sad people, right? For real, it's like, no, I don't have depression. Do you think of killing yourself? Oh yeah, oh, I've tried many times, but I'm not sad about it.
What the hell? You know? And I thought, no, that's sad people. And they go, no, you think of, I go, yeah. They go, do you have a plan? I like, just one? No, I have different moods. I have multiple plans. And so I was age 54 and I'm clinically diagnosed with depression and I had never talked about it. I would sleep with a gun against my head, a gun in my mouth. I had a 45 -ruber that I would travel with when I was on the road.
and I would put a round on the chamber and pull the hammer back and sleep with my finger on the trigger. Just thinking, oh, if it's all ready to go. Talk about on the edge. If it's all ready to go, it'll be easier, right? And you don't have depression. Holy shit. No, that's because that's sad people. That's edge. That's on the edge. Yeah, and multiple tries, multiple, you know. Did you dip into alcohol or drugs? No, not so much. Never got that bad. No, I did a...
Can you imagine being in that condition on alcohol Have seen a man called Otto? Have you seen a man called Otto with Tom Hanks? Yes, loved it. I told my wife, if I would have been by myself watching that, I think I would have got up and left part way through. Because I had - It too real for you. I had forgotten about some of my suicide attempts. I forgot about the car in the garage.
I forgot about waking up on the floor. Did things happen to you that they were preventing it? Well, I pulled the car in the garage like, fuck it, I'm done. I'll just leave it running until I die. And then my garage wasn't that airtight. I didn't do the hose in the window or anything. And like 30 minutes, I'm like, this is stupid. I'm too ADD to drive this way. It just smells bad. I turned the car off and did other things. I wondered if you're gonna hang yourself.
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would you pass out from lack of blood flow first or would you choke? Because choking doesn't sound very pleasant. I believe you choke. I think you feel it. I think it's a painful, you don't. You don't. And what I did was I wrapped a rope around my neck, but I didn't tie it. I just wrapped, it was a big fat rope. I tied it, I just wrapped it around and pulled it tight until I passed out. And I just thought, well, if I pass out, I'll let go of the rope. And, um.
I had forgot about doing this. And then I woke up on the floor gasping for air, you know, not remember. And there's a scene in the movie where he wakes up on the floor gasping for air. And I was like, the more we were watching the movie, I could feel my heart racing. I could feel my breath getting short. Rear auto. Yeah, yeah. You know, passing out drunk on railroad tracks, but I was on the tracks that were going out of town, not coming in or, you know, the train went on the other side. Stupid that you never.
Yeah, you know, and I can't count how many times with a gun out in the desert. I remember screaming a couple of times, just trying to hype myself into it, just with the gun, just going, ah, ah, ah, and it's like, ah, I can't leave my dog out here. You know, I can't, what's my dog gonna do? Lick my blood and be out here with the coyotes. And so, you know, there's times it's like, ah, I can't leave my dog out. You're suicide selfish? Yeah. So we talk about this in our show.
Not to the, when you're in that moment. So our show, the format is it's always four comedians. So it's not me telling my story. It's always four comics. Everybody does five minutes of comedy upfront, not mental health comedy. Just comedy. I just want you to laugh and meet us in our happy place. There's no depression on stage. This is our happy place. This is where our depression disappears. And then we come back out and we answer five questions. And one of the five questions is, you know, what do you do that makes it worse? And for me, it's,
I listen to the lies. I have these voices in my head from the time I was a little kid that tell me you're no good, you're worthless, and the sooner you're gone, the better this world is gonna be. And what I do that makes it worse is I listen to them and I believe them and I give them space. And then you just start down this rabbit hole of remembering every bad thing and everybody you've hurt, all that. And you're just like, yeah, you're right. The sooner I'm gone.
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the better this world is gonna be. And so people talk about suicide being selfish, but to that person in that moment, you are doing the world a favor by taking yourself out of the picture. According to the demons. It's a lie. According to the enemy. Absolutely. It's an absolute lie. It's an absolute lie, but not to you in that moment. In that moment, it's like my life insurance is worth so much more than I am to my family. It's a lie, but not to you in that moment. And so it's believing those lies, you know, that makes it so much worse. So back to where,
I had my 5150 and it made me, it was a wretched experience, the three days it was, but it made me realize, okay, if I don't actively do something to deal with my depression, my grandkids are never gonna know who I am. That's a fact. If I don't take a role in this and do something about it. And so that's when I found this therapist who I'd met in a recovery program.
I met with him every Tuesday at 2 .30 for six months. We met together and got some great therapy and some great ways to process and deal with breathing techniques and all this. So about two months after my 5150, I found a suicide note I wrote in the sixth grade. So I thought - How was that like reading that? At first I thought it was cute. I was like, that's so cute, sixth grade! Sixth grade. And there was no date on it.
but I had a crush on Michelle Madsen in the sixth grade in Mr. Jensen's class, because I'm left -handed, she's right -handed, and our elbows would touch when we would write. And it's like, you remember that from the sixth grade. And my notes, I don't want to live anymore, I just want to die, no one's ever going to care. And then my next entry in this little journal I found said, I think Michelle Madsen's a fox. And that was my carbon date. That's like, oh, Mr. Jensen's class, sixth grade, I know exactly where that was.
And then about this same time I watched the Robin Williams special, this come inside my mind, this two hour long documentary about his life. And they don't even mention a word, not a syllable, not a sentence, nothing about depression. He died by suicide and they won't even mention it. And I thought he would have mentioned it. Comics have no boundaries. For sure. He would have talked about it. He would have had no fear to talk about it. And I thought, I bet I could get some comics together and I want to put together a show of just raw.
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real vulnerability and talk about what it really feels like. Every little detail that we can drag up about it. And who better than comedians? We have no boundaries. There's not a topic you can think about that comics haven't covered. So let's make this the topic and let's find a way to demonstrate a conversation. So me and some other comics got together, which was interesting. There was Steph Garcia, who I knew struggled with depression. She was one of my gym members and her and I had been comedian friends for years. And so,
She'd had mental breakdowns and we had talked about stuff. And then I called my friend Jenny that owns Laughs Unlimited, which is the eighth longest running comedy club in the country in Sacramento. I go, hey, here's what I want to put together. Show us, I need some comics that she goes, oh, you need to call Ellis and Carlos. And these are friends of mine that I know. I go, what, Ellis? Why am I gonna call them? She goes, oh yeah, severe depression. I go, serious? I've known these guys for 15 years, what?
And so we all got, they said, yeah, I'm in. And so we had monthly meetings. We'd have a dinner at my house. We'd spend three or four hours at these dinners talking about what would it look like? What do we have to be afraid of? Is the world too woke? Is wokeness gonna not allow us to talk about something so serious? You know, we talked about the title of the show and it needs to be, we want this, we want, I want the title to be a little disturbing, you know? I want people to realize, yeah, we're gonna talk about something hard and we're gonna laugh.
So there needs to be some kind of a fair warning on that. And so, you know, the name of the show is One Degree of Separation, a funny look at depression and suicide. And that puts some people off, but it also makes people go to our website and go, what, what are you doing? How are you gonna do this? And then they watch what we do and they're like, oh, okay. Who goes to your shows then? We do it every week. It doesn't matter if you're depressed or not if you go to one of those shows?
No, it's for everyone. So here's, here's, cause there's two, there's two different people that come to our show. People who struggle with depression and people who know someone who struggles with depression. So if you don't struggle with depression, we're going to give you tools. We're going to give you these five questions that we use. We pass those out. Everybody gets a copy of those, whether it's, we do this for sixth graders. We do this for military. Everybody gets a copy of the five questions. Here's your five questions to have a conversation. Now we're going to demonstrate what the conversation looks like and we're going to answer the five questions.
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And so the first question is what, and these came from interviewing doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists. I said, what would you want to see talked about if you went to a venue and you had four people that have no boundaries? What do you want them to talk about? As a mental health professional, what do you want to see talked about? And so from all these interviews, we came up with these five questions. At least that's what I tell people, but I swear to you.
These questions, we have therapists take these and go, oh my hell, these are, they're so simple and there's so much depth to each one of these. Every interview I did, everything fits under these five questions. Military, we had a command sergeant major, he goes, I love this simplicity, he goes, I want my soldiers to have a copy of these in their shoulder sleeve to be able to have conversations whenever they want. The depth and the simplicity of these are amazing. I wrote them down in two minutes. I literally, I have all my notes from all of our dinners.
and there's nothing in there about these. And I just sat there and I was like, oh, what does it feel like physically describe your depression? What do others do that makes it worse? What do others do that makes it better? What do you do that makes it worse? What do you do that makes it better? There's nothing that doesn't fit under those five questions. And I think when you have something that quick,
and that's that profound, that's God, and that's inspiration. And so audience members will answer these. No, we Oh, they don't? We do, we're on stage. Oh, you answer. We answer. Oh, you go through. So everybody does their five, everybody does their four comedians. Four comedians. answer five questions. It's like a regular comedy show. Everybody does five minutes, five minutes, they go off stage. And the four comedians, there's no common answer to those five questions. No. Then I go, all right, so I do two sets. I do a set to get them to laugh, and then I introduce our first comic coming out tonight is Sidney Stigert's or whoever, and it's like a regular comedy show. They come on stage, they leave the stage.
And then after they've all done their five minute sets, I come back out and I say, look, here's how we came up with this show. And here's my story. I talk about my 5150 and about the value of these five questions. And you're going to get a copy of these afterwards, grab them. Now we're going to show you what it looks like. And so welcome my comics all back out again, big round of applause. And we all sit and there's four bar stools and four microphones. Like, all right, physically, what does your depression feel like? Sydney, what does your feel like? What do you get? All right, Carlos, what about you? You know, Ellis. And everybody answers these questions. And there's,
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They're different, but there's a theme to them that it is physical. It is, there's a physical. It's wrenching. Yes, yes. Some people feel things in their heart. We've talked about that a lot on this podcast too. Yeah. When people say, I feel, I feel, it's one of my, what do mean you feel? People say, I feel like I need to tie my shoe. What the hell are you talking about? Right. You know you have to tie your shoe. I mean, anyway, some people feel things in their heart. I do not. I feel things in my Physically, yeah.
So if I had depression, my guess is I would want to throw up. It would be a very hollow, sickening feeling in my stomach. For some. For some. Yeah. It would be their heart. It would be like, my heart is broken. My chest. My chest. My breathing changes. I can feel the breathing. My breathing's shallow. I feel pressure in my head. So every mental health and physical health professional I talked to, their number one pet peeve universally was people don't think of it as a real illness. It's just in your head. Right?
That first question is so simple. So to ask somebody that's struggling with depression, well, just tell me what it feels like physically, not your emotions, not your feelings. What does it feel like? You're acknowledging and recognizing, I know this isn't just in your head. I know this isn't just a mood you're in. This is something real and it's something physical. Just tell me the physical part of it. That's so profound and so grounding, the complexity of that question.
and how it grounds, it gets somebody that's in their head, and it's like, oh, all right, my chest hurts, it feels like indigestion from my throat to my stomach, and my breathing's shallow, I feel a fog. We've had comics say, I feel like I'm underwater and I can see the surface, and I'm grabbing, and I can't get up, I just can't get up. Drowning. Right, we had a comic, she goes, I feel like I ran a marathon, like I just ran a marathon. She goes, which is crazy, I would never run a marathon, right?
And so you get humor with the answers too, but everybody describes this. All right, that's what it feels like physically. Like me, when I talk about, I go, I can feel mine coming on when it's gonna be bad, like a cold. You know how you start feeling a little raspy one day and you could feel a cold coming on for a couple of days before - Right, take Zycam, yeah. Before you wake up and you're sick one day. And that's how my depression, I can feel it. And it doesn't matter how good my life is.
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Depression doesn't care how wonderful. I know what time of day it is or what's happening. No, it just shows up. It could be in the grandest moments of my life and it'll show up. And there's times when I'll tell my wife, hey, I think tomorrow is gonna be a bad day. And she'll go, okay, well, let's make some plans. Let's go on a motorcycle ride, right? Or let's go to the lake and paddleboard or something. And so everybody answers that question. The next one is, all right, well, what do others do that makes it worse? It's like we have therapists that work with students and they go,
I have kids that won't open up and talk about their feelings, but they'll answer these five questions. What does it feel like? All don't talk about your feelings, just tell me what it feels like. Oh yeah, I can do that. All right, well what do others do that makes it worse? Oh, hell yeah, I'll tell you that. We had a lady walk out of our show once. Her daughter was one of our gym members who was probably in her maybe mid -30s and she had brought her mom to the show. And we all answer this, what do others do that makes it worse? And we all give the answers and this mom gets up and goes out in the lobby sobbing.
And my wife, she's like our damage control. And she goes out, she goes, what's going on? She goes, those are all the things I do. I thought I was helping. All those things they said that makes it worse. Those are all the things I do. I thought I was helping. I didn't realize. It's like, all right, well, now you do.
I mean, changing people's lives. Yeah. The next question, what do you, all right, well then what do others do that makes it better? And there's, it's a gratitude of this. Okay. When you just, when you don't try and fix it and you just sit with me through it, if I had a cold, you wouldn't try and talk me out of a cold, right? No. But you could sit with me, you could bring me, you could, you come, you could, you know, Hey, do you need a blanket? You want me to sit with you? And it's different for everyone as what helps and what hurts. You'll hear the same, some people say when you give me some space and the next comic will say,
Don't leave me alone. When you give me space because I'm not being funny and I'm not the clown right now, and you leave me alone and give me space, that makes it worse. And so the answers are different. And you don't know the answer until you have your own conversation with somebody. Then the next one is this inventory, this recovery question of, all right, well, what do you do that makes it worse?
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And everybody, it's like, okay, when I drink too much, when I isolate. When a bottle of fricking vodka. Yeah, yeah, you know, when I A little light of cocaine, I mean, yeah. We did a show, so we always use local comedians when we travel. And so like, we did a show in Kentucky and I found this guy that lived in Lexington where we were doing the show. And it's funny, I have to interview him, right? And so it's like, hey, here's what we're doing, here's the show, it's not a typical, you're only gonna do five minutes of squeaky clean comedy.
And then we have this panel, we're gonna answer these five questions. I want you to go over the questions and look at them. You have to struggle. Do you have your own struggles with depression? Sometimes I interview comics and they're telling me their story. I'm like, yeah, you're too happy. I'm sorry, you can't be on the show. You disqualified, because they're not depressed Maybe if your mom dies, call me. But right now you're just too damn happy and it's not, it's gotta be lived experience. We're not up there to give advice or because we've got it figured out. So this comic,
we're in Lexington and it gets to the question, what do you do that makes it worse? And he stops and you just have this raw moment where he goes, ah, he goes, I had an answer that I thought was funny. Um, cause I didn't realize how real this part of the show was going to be. And he goes, I think I lie. He goes, I think I lie. And I say, I'm okay when I'm not okay.
and for an audience to see, you see that, that audience sees that, sees him noodle. I bet the whole place is so quiet, you could hurt a pin drop. And it's like, that's why I like bringing in new comics and people and it changes them. For a lot of them, it's their first time ever publicly talking about their depression and I see their lives change. We've had over 60 different comedians do our show in the last five years. Awesome. And it changes them. You know, we just did a show, we were in Connecticut three weeks ago and this little Bristol, Connecticut where ESPN's headquarters is. Yeah.
They did a mental health day for the community and they have this theater, this hundred year old theater that's restored. And so we were the keynote at the end of the day. And one of our comics, Jay Whitaker, about two months ago, maybe three months ago, he determined that I either need to end my career or end my life, military. And he goes, I realize I need to end this career or I will end my life.
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And so he wrote his resignation. And this month, his career, his wife filed for divorce about the same time. So he's losing his marriage, his house, and his career all at the same time. And then we come and do this show in this little town of Bristol, Connecticut. And he's just raw and real. And after the show, my wife had video of him coming up to me and just grabbing my hand with both of his hands and just saying, thank you.
Changes his life. And you can see his face. We got a text message from him almost every day for the next week of him just saying, this has been the best week. Now how rewarding is that for you as you deal with depression? I mean, the helping other people, how does that help you? I've spent most of my life wanting to die from at least the sixth grade, if not older. That's an incredible statement, sir. Most of my life, more days than not, I woke up going, oh, let this be the day.
I've always hated New Year's resolutions. Mine's always been the same. Don't make it. Don't make it till next year. Make this the year that you just ended and be done. And these last two years, especially, we've done this for five years, but these last two years on stage, I'll say this is the first time I've wanted to live more than I've wanted to die.
and I still have depression, I still have those days, but the severity of it and knowing, you know, when I, at least like Jay Whittaker, how would it affect him if I died? And now I look at this community that I've built and this army of comedians that do this show. And, you know, one of the things I always wanted was I want this to be, I want to be able to scale it. And so I never wanted the show to be about me. I want to be able to have, to train other comedians to run a show.
so that I could have a team of comics that just do military gigs, that just do schools, that just do, so I can have teams of comics all over there. I want it to be bigger than I can handle and have to have other comics do it. And I've got, right now I've probably got about a dozen comics that I think that I would feel comfortable with running their own show. So there, you know, there are millions of people listening to this podcast, but we do have listeners in all 50 states and 46 countries. How can people get ahold of you? Our website. How can they help you? Go to our website, get us a gig.
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just have any organization group, military, veterans. People ask us, you know, who do you do this for? We go, everything. We've done dental associations. Dentists are always in like the top five for suicides. We've done sixth graders. We've done middle schools. We've done high schools. Last year we went to rural Wyoming, which seems redundant to even say. The first school we went to, the entire school, sixth through 12th grade, the entire school in Matitzi, Wyoming.
was 36 kids. That was the whole school. And we told them, you're gonna have to use these questions. You don't have resources. You don't have a school counselor on campus. You're gonna have to be each other's counselor. You need to learn how to talk to each other about it. We went from that school, we drove 45 miles to the next closest school and they were twice as big, they had 70 kids. So we've done from that size to, we were keynote speakers. We just got another, we're gonna be keynotes again. We were.
keynote speakers about six months ago for a thousand school teachers and school therapists at the Disneyland Hotel. Wow. So school teachers, we're getting ready to do another one in Riverside, California in September. We've done the army. We went to Fort Devin. We did suicide prevention training for a hundred command sergeant majors. And I'm not military. I called my son, I go, hey, is this a big deal? He goes, yeah. He goes, dad, those are the dudes. I go, really? He goes, yeah. He goes, that is the highest rank.
that you can get as an enlisted. He goes, that's like the equivalent of a general. He goes, matter of fact, if you had a general and a command sergeant major in the same room, he goes, probably more respect for the, cause they got there through combat and military. Yeah, exactly. They didn't go to school to get a They got promoted all the way. And we got a standing ovation for this group of a hundred command sergeant majors. And then that opened up, we're going to Houston. And so there's no group. And now you're doing prisons, aren't you? We just got hired, California.
California prison industry, just we just, matter of fact, I literally signed the contracts this morning. Everything's all finalized. Two year contract for California prison industry and they do new employee training. So they take all new employees for their program for the entire state. They come to Folsom, California for employee training every month. And they have an hour set aside for suicide prevention training. And we are their suicide prevention training program for all their new employees.
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And it came about their HR director found her nephew at her house. And a friend of mine works with her and he says, you got to talk to my friend, Brad. They do a comedy show. And which always gets, we always get the Scooby Doo reaction. We say, we do a comedy show about depression and suicide. They're like, they had turned sideways. And, and he goes, you got to go see what they're doing. And we had a show at a junior college a couple of weeks after she had found this nephew. And after the show, she said, this is real. And this,
this is, you're teaching skills. You leave with a real skill and a capacity to have a conversation that you didn't have before you got here. She goes, that's so much better than what we're doing now. Because it's just, it's a PowerPoint. It's statistics and numbers and corrections have higher rates and this group and that group and lock your gun up. But we give you these five questions and we show you, you leave with the skill and ability.
to have a conversation that you didn't have before. Matter of fact, the girl that's doing the training now that does the PowerPoint, we went to see what they're doing now, and then they had me do a shorter 30 minute presentation just by myself, and we passed out the five questions. And the next day, we did a tour of Folsom Prison with all these people that were at training, and it wasn't a big group, it was 15, 20 people or so, and the girl who had been doing the training, she came up, she goes, my sister and I are really close, we're 14 months apart.
We live together still and she struggles with depression and I struggle with depression and we had no idea that it's different. And she goes, we were up till one in the morning last night, crying, going over these five questions. And the things that helped me make it worse for her and piss her off and vice versa. But we didn't know, we didn't know. And she said, I'm so much closer to my sister and I have so much more understanding and her of me by just by using these five questions to have a conversation.
Unbelievable work. Okay, give us your website. It's one degree of separation dot life. So the number one, the digit one degree of separation dot life, which was cool. I didn't realize there was a dot life, but when I saw that it's like, Oh, that's perfect. I'll take that. Yeah.
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And we've got great, there's videos on there. Yeah, and the questions are on there too. Five questions are on there. There's videos on there that show what we do, show what we do in the schools. There's a whole bunch of media interviews. We'll probably put a link to this podcast. And ask somebody to book you or inquire about more information. Absolutely, go on there, send me an email. My phone number's on there, all my contact stuff. And that's how, yeah, you get ahold of us on there. But it's been an amazing, amazing journey for sure. Excellent. Well, there are two more questions that I have that I didn't.
incorporate into this. This has been wonderful, wonderful. Is humor the most funny when inserted somewhere it doesn't belong? To me, for comedians, you know, my darkest moments are my friends make me laugh and and when you can...
when you can take something dark and tragic and laugh at it, it gives you power. I'll give you Even if it's simple, like if you're sitting in church and you're 12 years old and somebody, your dad farts - yes.
and you just start, you can't stop laughing. It's funny. We had a friend that would sit behind us in church and he would make up his own lyrics to the church songs and only we could hear him because he would sit right behind us. You're just dying. And it was like, yeah, Susie went behind the bar and it was her first time, it was love and then she reached out and they were inappropriate and we would just be sitting in church with our shoulders and our heads bouncing.
And I'll give you a great story of Arnie State. So there was a show called Rob Arnie and Don show in Sacramento. It was nationally syndicated and Arnie slit his wrist. And he goes, yeah, he goes, it coagulates. He goes, it'll just quit bleeding. He goes, so I cut it again. He goes, and it coagulates. It just, he goes, it'll just quit bleeding. I go, that's why you do it in a warm bathtub with the, he goes, well, I know that now. Right? But he said somebody did a wellness check.
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he had posted or something and so sheriff came in and they found him all bloody matter EMT said they'd never seen that much actual damage to somebody's wrist. So two days later, how's he doing that? Two days later, he's in a mental hospital and he's, I think he had a 52 50, which is a two week old, which was my address that I lived in for six years was a little honestly at 52 50. And so he's in the mental hospital, his arms, his wrists are all bandaged up. It's like two days afterwards and his dad comes in to visit him.
and his dad's got a dark sense of humor. And it's just him and his dad and the psychiatrist. And his dad says, so what happened? He goes, oh, he goes, I cut my wrist. He goes, it quits bleeding. He goes, it just coagulates. He goes, so I cut it up again. I carved it good. He goes, and it just, it quits bleeding. It coagulates. And his dad goes, well, shit son, you know I've got blood thinners, right? If you would have just asked me. And the therapist like. He goes, we start rolling. We're dying. He goes, I just got crying, laughing. And the therapist is looking at him like, what in the?
What's the matter with you too? And he goes, we laughed so hard. He goes, and I swear to God, he goes, I swear to God, I swear on my life. That was the moment I knew I was gonna be okay. Laughter's great. That was the moment when I knew. It'll set you free. I'm gonna get through this, all right? I laughed, I'm gonna get through this. Absolutely, love it, love it. Last question, because I've always wanted to know this and I always wanted to have a comedian on this podcast. And the question is, are comedians cowboys?
or are comedians eggheads? Oh, cowboys. And I'll give you - Really? Yeah. All the way, huh? All the way, all the way. And I had a comedian explain this to me. He goes, in the wild west days, a cowboy would roll into town and they would have some event or something or a shootout or blah, blah, blah. And it's all these people and they're all strangers. And then he would ride away and go to the next town. True.
and have another whatever it was that he was doing. And he would ride away to the next town. And it's like, that is that's a great answer. Isn't that? I love it. Yeah, absolutely. And I always thought maybe they're more egghead because I think maybe I'm more egghead than cowboy sometimes. I overthought it. It really is a cowboy. Yeah, that's right. You're chased around the country. You go in and you do your business and you get the hell out of town. And make everybody laugh. Thank you. Kiss the girls. I'm on my You're a cowboy. I'll be And you're on your way to the next town. Fantastic. Yeah.
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Brad, I appreciate your time today. Is there anything that we need to cover that I haven't? No, I could sit here for another hour and I've got stories. Passionate. Yeah. Passionate, man. Change of lives. Yeah, it is, but it's an amazing, and honestly, my Wi -Fi, we don't feel like this is our, it's like this is God's thing that we're doing and we're just holding on. You haven't even itched to scratch it. No, we signed a book deal last year. We've got a publishing company. We're gonna have a book come out probably at end of this year. We've had a film crew following us for two years, working on a documentary. Love it. And so we've got.
you know, lots of things in the making and happening and it's just, it's out of our hands. It's just. Check them out listeners. YouTube, you can go see them on dry .comedy. Dry bar comedy. Dry bar. Dry bar. Dry bar. Dry doc. You said something weird. Yeah. Dry bar comedy. Yeah. Cool. Or one degree of separation .life. Thank you. Thank you.